Doctor Strangelouvre
by Chenalos
Summary: Why does Ranma need French bread to survive?Who is this tall, mysterious doctor with a wierd accent?What gene threatens to crush Akane's life?Where did Ryoga meet a kungfu psychologist?When did Kodachi quote from the book of Judges?How did Kasu
1. Ranma on cause and effect

Chenalos Presents, 

a 14 Rivers Production

to AXZ, (both of them) with love.

I swear none of the characters are meant to represent anyone living or  
dead. I hereby also swear that I HAVE NOTHING AGAINST THE FRENCH  
WHATSOEVER. It's just a comedy.

Ranma 1/2 (c) Rumiko Takahashi. Please don't sue me.

Writing style inspired by Chuck Palahniuk.

geocities-dot-com/rokan99/chenalos.html 

Thanks Soviet!

---  
Dr. Strangelouvre, or: How I learned to relate to women the hard way.  
----

The name's Ranma.

I wouldn't tell you any of this if I didn't know you knew me. You  
probably know I become a girl when I get doused with cold water. Nothing I  
say is going to surprise you except what I did to get here, now. So lets  
cut right to the chase. Here I am, I got a 4-foot long piece of bread  
in one hand, and my other hand is just a clenched fist. If I drop the  
bread, I'm screwed. If the bread breaks, I'm screwed. A problem, because  
this bread is soggy. I spent my whole life throwing punches, and  
socking out kicks. If anything happens to this bread, though, I'll spend the  
rest of my life asking people if they want to super size their meal.  
The bread breaks, I lose, and my kempo career is over, so a wax coating  
on your car will cost an extra 150 yen.

You'll probably want to know how it all came to this, if it makes you  
feel better, so do I. I'll fill you all in on the minor details I know  
leading up to this moment, which is a deul with Akane's doctor. This is  
not Dr. Tofu, mind you. This Doctor here, monitors Akane's 'Special  
condition.' You should know that it's because of this condition that I  
permanently lost her as my fianc'. It's because of her condition that I  
have to fight her doctor in the first place. And, thanks to this  
condition, I'll never be able to practice martial arts again. You can ask me  
about her condition, but I don't want to talk about it.

One thing at a time, here. We'll come to that bridge when the flood  
waters slam you into it. You'd be amazed the kind of messes you can get  
into, just for demanding some kind of normality out of your life.

I hope normality is a real word.

Strangelouvre, Dr. W. Strangelouvre, he's opposing me, happily laughing  
his ass off. That damn blonde hair of his shining in the sun, that just  
peaked out from behind the clouds. Glistening Goldilocks. Looks like  
somebody planted a wheat field on his head. What kind of a name is  
Strangelouvre, anyway? I heard from Kodachi once that the French don't even  
recognize W as one of their letters. Kodachi, another big problem.  
She'll be here any second. Depending on the outcome, she'll be eternally  
devoted to either me or Strangelouvre. It's a lose/lose situation. Le  
Madame Kodachi.

Suppose the world is about to be destroyed by 2 billion H-bombs worth  
of solar flare. You have to decide which of the worlds nations gets  
ripped out of the ground and the metals manufactured in order to build a  
rescue ship that will save the human race. What do you do?

The clock is ticking.  
What do you do?  
Mankind is on the line.  
Make the call.  
Give up?  
It's simple.

Vote France.

That's what I'd do. Rip Strangelouvre's nation right out of the ground,  
and use the Eiffel Tower as a TV antenna. The Arc d' Triumph would make  
a great spoiler. Throw the whole thing into outer space. Maybe I'm  
rushing my decision too much. You shouldn't judge an entire people or  
nation because of just one man, but if the French are like Strangelouvre, I  
vote for the next Godzilla movie to be shot in Paris. Every single  
problem I've had recently goes right back to Strangelouvre. He's the cause  
of all this.

Cause and Effect. This is how the world works. What I'm in right now,  
(Bread in my hand, Strangelouvre laughing at me, never being able to  
fight again) this is what you'd call "Effect" usually more interesting  
that cause ever is, but always confusing if you don't know that "Cause".  
Hit yourself if you're nodding off. Pay attention, this might become  
important later. I can go on and on and on about how crazy this effect is  
going to be...so I will.

Somewhere in this town, Ryoga and his psychologist/sparring partner are  
hunting me down, and they're thirsty for my blood. For Ryoga, I guess  
he's looking for a right of passage. This is the single act that moves  
you from being a child into being an adult. All cultures have these. For  
Jews, it's a Bahr Mitzvah. Alot of African tribes get circumcision. I  
could tell you what it was in Ancient Greece, but you wouldn't want to  
hear it. For Ryoga, though, my demise is his right of passage. He is  
convinced that when he kills me, He'll never get lost again, he'll have  
Akane all to his own, and he'll become a man. All of this new way of  
thinking is from his Psychologist, Dr. Noitaru. Ryoga and I use to fight  
alot, but that psychologist of his turned him into a maniac. That's  
right. More maniacal than usual. To Dr. Noitaru, Ryoga killing me would be  
therapeutic. Psychology and martial arts don't mix, and this guy does  
both. I mean think about it: in one, you're helping the whiner by letting  
him whine, the other you're helping the whiner by beating the whine out  
of him. I'll go with whichever one makes him shut up faster. Besides, I  
think "Dr." Noitaru is not a doctor at all, just some faking quack. You  
can fake practicing psychology pretty easily.

Don't believe me?  
Try it.

Just remember these three sentences:

How do you feel?  
Talk about that.  
How did that make you feel?

Calmly ask those questions (the first one once, and the other two  
intermittently) hang up some bogus diplomas, and let the guy sit on a couch  
for an hour, and you'll roll away with 8,000 yen a session. Back to  
Ryoga. One of these quacks, using those three sentences brainwashed my  
most heated rival into a ticking time-bomb with my name on it. Wait, I  
forgot the other important part of psychology: Consolement. It's important  
that after Ryoga tells his partner in crime how he wants to rip out my  
trachea and use it to fix roof gutters that Dr. Noitaru tell him  
"That's alright" and "It's not your fault."

How's that for effect? Maybe I overestimate Ryoga's will to kill me.  
Think about it, he couldn't kill ME. I'm the reason he's been on a quest  
for these past few years, I'm the person he's been looking for all this  
time, and it's because of me he is who he is today. Don't quote me on  
that, because when I think about it, it's a damn good motive. If the  
bread fails me, I'll never be able to fight again, thus, when Ryoga comes  
to take his revenge, I'll be totally defenseless. I can't fight back,  
so even lost boy should be able to off me. Anyway, I know Ryoga, he  
won't fight if I can't fight, and that all comes down to weather or not  
this frigging piece of soggy-ass bread holds together.

This is all the effect. It's just me, the doc, two loaves of bread and  
a bunch of puddles out in the Furinkan yard. Somewhere in this town,  
Kodachi is running to arrive here, Ryoga is with his therapist wandering  
all around Nerima, but wanting in his heart to be right here, beating in  
my skull. There might be other people who want to see this, but I  
assure you Akane is not one of them. I'm sure Akane is at home, balling her  
eyes out, praying to God, and wishing on the stars that we never meet  
again. For what it's worth, I can't remember wanting to see her more.

This is the effect. This is the way the world is working right now. If  
by this point you still aren't interested, then get out while the  
gettings good.

Dr. Strangelouvre calls to me, he says "Aer yeeu Ready, Monseur?"

>From this point on, I'll be telling you the cause. Keep in mind, it's  
all leading up to this. I squeeze the bread loaf. A sponge would be  
preferable.

I call back to him; I got to start this sometime. And I do.

Cause and effect. This is the way the world works. Effect is always  
pretty, but it's gotta be caused by something less interesting. Thus, from  
here on in, this is the cause. The build up. See how I got to where I  
am today. If you're nodding off, hit yourself.

-----  
cause:1  
-----

This was her SPECIAL Doctor. Dr. Strangelouvre is a professional  
there's no-one like him. Medical degrees from Bla bla bla. Kasumi painted an  
awfully in-depth picture. Dr. Strangelouvre, Akane's 'Special doctor'  
since she was 11. "There's no need for you to go. She'll be fine."

Like I didn't know that. I wasn't even interested in the doctor's place  
to begin with. I'd just taken a hot bath, and I'm in my glorious guy  
form; and hungry. All I wanted was some Chinese food. I was putting my  
shoes on, getting all set to get to Shampoo's restaurant when I hear a  
voice behind me.

"That's the way, boy."

A compliment from the old man, when I haven't done anything good or  
bad. You know right away, this means trouble.

I asked him what did he mean?

"Why accompanying Akane on her doctor's visit, of course."

I did't particularly care to go to doctor Tofu's. All I wanted was some  
Chinese food.

"Now don't just bail out on this, Ranma. This is your chance to be  
there for her, understand her better...even at the biological level."

Right now, my biological level is telling me 'Run screaming out the  
door. Fight or flight. Migrate.'

Then Kasumi comes in saying this is Akane's special-blah blah blah,  
I've already covered that part. I know why Kasumi's all up in arms about  
me not going with Akane on this one. Everyone knows what you're talking  
about when you mention a girl's "SPECIAL" doctor. Fortunately, I only  
have to deal with the problems of being a woman 50 of the time. Which  
spares me the need of these professionals. Thank God.

Just a second.

Gynecologist.

THERE. I said it.

Pop doesn't get the hint. Neither I, nor Kasumi has the guts to say  
"Akane's gynecologist" to him. So I keep on putting on my shoes intent  
only on leaving. Kasumi just utters "oh dear."

I have to tell you about this dream I once had. It's late at night. The  
Tendos and us, we're all asleep. Suddenly, an electrical outlet shorts  
out and shoots sparks like a firecracker.

Akane comes down the stairs. Strangelouvre or bust. For me, there's no  
way out now.  
"Where are you going, Ranma?"  
She's asking me where I'm going. What should I tell her?

This shorting out socket sets light to a curtain. The fire starts out  
small, then it works it's way up, and to the next curtain. The fire  
catches light to the top of the window frame, and from there spreads across  
the wall. The lot of us, are upstiars and asleep. Helpless and trapped  
in our dreams.

Checkmate.

As soon as Akane asks where I'm going. I know I'm screwed. Just as my  
lips start to form the syllable for 'Sham' She'll go off on some hussy  
fit about me just leading her on, and playing the field with her "Not  
that it's any of MY business." She'd say. And it's not her business. On  
the other hand if I say I'm going with her, to the gynecologists, mind  
you. Then I'm trapped in a waiting room, while my mind is forcefully  
bombarded with images of exams and cold utensils I NEVER want to think  
about. Maybe that's just my girl-side speaking, but for me, it's true from  
any way I look at it.

Nothing I can do about it.

The fire runs across the oak-bracket cieling and maple-plank floor like  
a quarterback on an end run. The 50, the 40, the 35. Blackening and  
blistering everything in its path. Before long, the entire downstairs is  
ablaze.

No way out.

If I don't go with Akane, I'll be assured pop will jump me and throw me  
in the pond when I get back. Those rocks hurt when you land on 'em. He  
knows that, and he knows that I know that. I've got to go with her now,  
or suffer hers and pops consequences for the rest of the day. So much  
for MY plans. Off to the Strangelouvre waiting room. The chair.  
Execution. In retrospect, I shoulda gone to the restaurant. All I wanted was  
some Chinese food.

Char grilled.

That's how my face looks after two minutes of this home-kit inferno.  
Everything; our room, The Dojo, Mr. Tendo's, Akane's and Nabiki's rooms.  
All of us roasted and burned up. The old freak even shrivels like  
newspaper at a bonfire. Everyone burned to death, Except for Kasumi.  
Kasumi's room starts to burn. Fist the door, then flames on the floor creep to  
the walls and consume the dresser. But just as the fire gets to her  
bed, it holds back. Not a single lick of fire will touch her blankets, no  
matter how hot the flames get. No spark will touch Kasumi. Unburned,  
protected, pure. When her bed falls through the floor, the fires hold her  
up and set her gingerly on the ground. She is a perfect angel, bedded  
down in hellfire.

Kasumi.

She watches Akane and I leave. I'm off to sit in the fiance' holding  
tank, reading magazines about the washed-up celebrities that are gonna be  
in the next movie I won't see. Then, occasionally remembering what's  
taking place a mere 20 feet away, through thin walls, shivers running up  
and down my spine like radar. Just as we clear the residence gate  
Nabiki makes a cameo appearance in my afternoon, as she heads inside.

"Where you guys headed?" she asks

"Just to the Doctor." Akane remarks, in a hurry.

"Well, tell Dr. Tofu I said hi."

It's not Dr. Tofu.

"It's not?" Nabiki turns up that conniving smile she does so well "Well  
Zen Ahkané, my best ees to youer Test-"

"Shut up!" Akane screams, and stomps her way down the street. Just  
before I move past the gate, back on the porch, I hear Kasumi mutter "Oh  
my."

In my dream. After the fire. After we all get burned to ashes and the  
ashes burned to smoke. After the flames willed themselves to save the  
eldest Tendo daughter, the sunrise peaks over the skyline. Kasumi opens  
her eyes, and in her perfect white-nightgown way, she looks to the left,  
then to the right. There, at the virgin white crater of a black blast  
pit, she opens her mouth and speaks words; perfect and pure and honest,  
as no other can say them.

"Holy fucking shit!"

----------------  
to be continued.


	2. Ranma on the nature of women

Dr. Strangelouvre  
  
Cause: 2  
  
Ranma on the Nature of Women --------  
  
Oh, look. We're here.  
  
Joy.  
Rapture.  
Bliss.  
  
The thought of being run over by a truck at this moment takes on so many faces. We enter the clinic arguing about something. I don't remember what. It's hard to keep up with all the things we fight about. I won't bother with details. The key is to simplify. Cause and effect. Akane and I are together, so we fight. This is how forced, unwilling fiancés should behave. This is how the world works. Anyway, we get inside. The receptionist sitting there, putting on nail polish. She sees us enter and dips the cap-brush back into the bottle. One moment, polishing her nails is the most important thing in the world to do. The next moment, it's greeting me and Akane, just goes to show, I guess, that the meaning of life is always changing.  
  
"Oh, Hello Akane. Hello, Young man."  
  
Hi.  
  
"You're right on time, so there won't be any wait, lucky. The nurse just got the room prepping done."  
  
I look at the receptionists' hands. Her right hand has two painted nails, her left hand has three done. This is the cross-hand technique. You paint one nail, and while it dries you paint a nail on the other hand. By the time you come back to the first hand, the first nail you painted is all dry. It's pretty rare to see, but it's just as systematic as the normal technique of left hand first then right hand. It also guarantees that one-whole hand of fingernails will never smudge no matter what you may accidentally rub up against. So touch-ups are a piece of cake. I know this because I can become a girl. Envious? Don't be. The woman punches up Akane's file on the computer, while it's processing, she turns to Akane.  
  
"Did I see you in the market yesterday?"  
  
"You could have." she replies, "I was with my sister Kasumi. I know we went to the grocery store, but then we went clothes shopping. Oh, you should have seen this one dress they had."  
  
Akane goes on about this dress, to this receptionist woman, who seems all too intent on hearing every word. From the hallway enters a nurse, another girl, who immediately interjects with, 'OH, Akane, how you been, Girl?' Suddenly, Akane needs to tell her about everything she did yesterday. I look over at the waiting room, two women yakking away. I can tell that from everywhere around talk goes on without me. Dresses, husbands, cooking, movies, terrorists, sports, sex. Here I am, a guy, marooned out of every circle of communication, just because of that. Because I'm a guy. Envious? Don't be. Meanwhile, at the center of all this, at the heart of this whole operation, even with all these women doing their woman thing for all their worth. They know that the reason any of them are here is because in this building there is a man. A man with power like you cannot believe. Get on the table. Drop your panties. Open up. Hold still, I'm going to put this in, and it may feel a little cold. This will give you chills. Not even the old freak has enough power to do this. Anyone with that much power shouldn't even exist, let alone make a living out of it.  
  
I'm going over to take a seat. Akane says it's fine, she'll be done in about half an hour. We go our separate ways. Now I'm hovering over the white-laminated plywood coffee table, loaded with magazines. You won't be familiar with any of the titles, but let me put it in perspective. Think Vogue. Think YM. Think Teen. Think covers of gorgeous Brad Pitt, Buffy's Angel, and hair-gelled Leonardo di Caprio. Think beauty and dating tips. Think gut-wrenching accounts of dinner with the man of your dreams that went all wrong. Think paper cutout tarot cards. Think consoling heart felt questionnaires, which can be a moody girls psychologist.  
  
How do you feel?  
Talk about that.  
How did that make you feel?  
  
I am woman, hear me roar. Sure. I become a woman, and I don't read this shit. And when I roar, I ROAR. I roar like no girl can. I'll tell you the secret. It's really quite simple. It's because I'm a guy. Just like the most powerful gynecologist in the world has to be a guy. Being a guy is the key to a good roar. I'll give this to Akane, she can roar too. It may be the best roar a girl is capable of. With her, it's because she's got a guy's mentality. If some boy starts hitting on me, I make sure he gets the message that I don't want it to happen again. Same with her. Powerful, forceful convincing. If women really want to roar, then they're just going to have to do it like guys do. But not every girl will go "Come on, attack me." Not every girl will break cinder blocks with their bare hands. Not every girl will have their house burn down around them, leaving them free to live any life they may have damn well pleased. Some girls, they read these magazines that I'm looking at right now. Why? Because girls will be girls.  
  
I pick up a copy of J-Shoujo, and flip to the middle, where the color photos end and the Black and white Manga begins. Here, where the deep monochrome, shimmering eyes of valiancy await me. Valiancy lives in a world where magic determines your power. If you can use magic well enough, you become a king or a queen or knight or something. You know, any of the first row of chess pieces. If you can't use magic well enough, you get to become a serf, a farmer, and any number of jobs that describe a pawn. Valiancy's father is the king of Zezeragos. Long ago, he went to another land. He left his queen behind to go "Fight a war."  
  
I hear a door open and close. I hear footsteps scuffle over to the receptionist.  
  
"Hays a yung garel come heer lookeeng for Freench lesóns?"  
  
"No, Dr. Strangelouvre, but you have a patient, Miss Tendo, in room 3, who is with Nurse Kobakura now."  
  
"Well, zen, How long befoar I most exámaen haer?"  
  
"She'll be ready in five minutes."  
  
"Veary well."  
  
I could picture Kasumi in her white night-gown, Grabbing this Dr. Strangelouvre, who is now hidden behind my manga. I could see her screaming in his face. "You prick, bastard. You lay one finger on my sister, and God help me, I'll stomp a butcher's knife all the way up your ass, handle first." One weird dream and your whole perspective on life changes.  
  
Back to Valiancy. A year later the king returns from the foreign land, with a newly born baby that he "Adopted." He named the girl Valiancy. The king makes plans for Valiancy to grow up and become the first High-queen over Zezeragos, no matter who she marries. When Valiancy is five years old, however, the queen makes a tragic announcement that the king has died in an "Accident." Not to worry Valiancy, for your adoptive mother, the queen, knows a man who has been her "Friend" for a long time, and he promises to "Take care of you."  
  
The front door opens  
  
"Hello, Doctor how are you today?"  
  
Oh, please God, no. It can't be. I hug the manga close to my face, so she won't see me. That's right, back to the manga. The "Friend" of the queen makes all the arrangements to have Valiancy "Taken care of." When some of the Palace guards take her away, and hide her somewhere in the village. They return to the palace and tell the queen's Friend, named Gist That they have "taken care of her." For years, Valiancy is raised in poverty, knowing that she is truly the daughter of a king, and having the magic to prove it.  
  
" Je dois vous dire une histoire mon cher." Strangelouvre says  
  
" Bien, docteur, continuent s'il vous plaît."  
  
Then Strangelouve start yakking and yakking.  
  
" C'est l'histoire de l'ami de mon oncle, Jaques, le pilote de combattant, juste aprés la deuxième guerre mondiale. Il était avec son amoureux par la seine. Pendant qu'ils embrassaient, elle a dit à lui ' Jaques, m'embrassent.' Il a atteint pour une bouteille de rioja. ' Jaques, ' elle a dit ' ce qui sont vous faisant?' "  
  
I'm still safe She hasn't noticed me. It's no secret, the girl Strangelouvre is yakking to is Kodachi. But all I can see is Valiancy. When she was 15, her dirt-level existence led her to a bordello, then a burlesque house, then a harem, and then, finally, a brothel. Cleaning jobs, mostly. Sex is a messy thing to clean up after, and someone's got to do it. Finally, to her joy, she becomes a 'working girl' two and a half years later. She's now 20, and still in the same trade. You may respond with disgust, but compared cleaning up after people who've had sex; actually getting to have sex is a welcome change. So many people who talk about this manga say, "I can't believe Valiancy, the heroine, is a whore." What's wrong with that? Even a whore can be a hero, that's the whole point. Besides, all the while, Valiancy has been and is the leader of an underground movement, called Orestes. Valiancy founded Orestes when she was 17, and is still the only member who can use magic. That means she's royalty if you can use magic, you're royalty. She's the royal prostitute. Her one true love is her right hand man in Orestes, Terro, but he doesn't know she loves her. To him she's either a commander or a prostitute, he believes that both those types of people are incapable of true love. I'm still guessing as to how they're going to end up.  
  
"Il m'a répondu ' suis Jaques, le pilote de combattant. Quand je prends la viande rouge, je dois prendre le vin rouge.' Il a versé le vin dans sa bouche et l'a embrassée. Après qu'ils aient embrassé, elle a dit à lui ' Jaques, m'embrassent... inférieur."  
  
" Ohh, comment le risqué cette histoire est."  
  
She still hasn't noticed me. Good. The ultimate goal of Orestes is to overthrow the queen and Gist, and establish a new ruler over Zezeragos. Almost every man she sleeps with, Valiancy makes another silent ally. She need not worry about these men exposing her. Who in their right mind would admit to allying with a whore? Being at the low end of a society does have incredible advantages.  
  
" Qui est vrai, parce que il a atteint pour une bouteille de chardonay, et a défait son chemisier, et l'a versé sur ses seins doux. ' Jaques, elle a dit ce qui sont vous faisant?' Il m'a répondu ' suis Jaques, le pilote de combattant quand je prends la viande blanche, je doit prendre le vin blanc. Il a commencé à embrasser loin à ses seins, et après un moment elle a dit à lui, ' Jaques, m'embrassent... inférieur.' "  
  
" OH, mon Dieu!"  
  
Revolution doesn't happen over-night, so in the mean time, Orestes is devoted to making sure individuals have justice from the tyrannous queen. Valiancy: hooker by night, hero by day. that's what this episode is about. She's fighting to win back a house from the government because they repossessed it from a single mother and her sweet little daughter.  
  
" Il a atteint pour une bouteille de cognac, soulevée sa robe, et pourd il sur sa taille. Il a frappé une allumette, et était sur le point de l'allumer, quand elle a sauté dans la seine. ' Jaques!' elle a crié ' CE QUI SONT VOUS FAISANT?' Il relplied ' me suis Jaques le pilote de combattant, et quand je descends, moi entrent vers le bas en flammes!'"  
  
"Oho-ho-ho-ho-ho!" That laugh echoes, and my fingernails dig into the gloss-finished pages.  
  
"Doctor, You're needed in room three."  
  
"Vaery well. My dear. Eef yeau weel meet me een zee poobleek laybraree at fiev o' clock, I weel heve time teu furzer yeur educación."  
  
"Very well, doctor. See you then."  
  
"Adieu."  
  
Strangelouvre leaves, I can hear her footsteps now. Kodachi is coming for me. She can't come over now. I'm not done reading. What will happen to my Valiancy?  
  
Kodachi pulls up a seat next to me. "Why, Ranma, my darling what brings you here?"  
  
Find out next time.  
  
To be continued...  
  
A couple of notes. Don't bother looking for J-shoujo or the Valiancy manga. Those are just my make believe little tack-ons. Actually, Valiancy isn't totally make believe, it's actually roundabout the plot of the myth of Electra, which if you ask me would make a great manga.  
  
The French in this chapter was all taken from the Babelfish translator at Don't worry too much about what Strangelouvre was going on about, it's just a stupid joke that probably didn't even translate right. If you know of any suggestible changes to the joke feel free to contact me.  
  
Ranma 1/2 property of Rumiko Takahashi.  
  
And now, because I'm ripping him off, here is a commercial.  
------------------  
  
You're told to live a certain life, to dress a certain way, to plan your future between certain limits.  
  
But if you could know the future, would there be any limits to contain you?  
  
Chuck Palahniuk's SURVIVOR  
  
"If you can hear me,   
  
A 14 Rivers Production 


	3. Ranma on social interaction

Dr. Strangelouvre  
  
Cause 3 -------  
  
It's official. I'm going to fight Dr. Strangelouvre. At this point, I'm looking forward to it. Chestnut fisting the most powerful type of doctor in the world. Gynecologists must think they can get anything they want. I'll show him the power of an anything goes martial artist. I am Ranma, hear me roar. Akane, obviously, isn't taking this well. She's down on the sidewalk, and I'm above her, walking the rim of a wall. Here we are just walking down the street, she's saying;  
  
"Geez, you idiot, you're so dumb. What's with you?"  
  
Is she kidding me? After the way Strangelouvre talked to me? She saw what happened. I was just sitting there, Minding my own business, when she and the doctor stepped out into the reception. Then the jerk has the audacity to say "What eez yeour relashiónship wiz zee maddame Kodachi?"  
  
"Yeah, Ranma just what were you doing with Kodachi."  
  
This is just what I need, get me angry. Give me motivation to whack Strangelouvre. Beat those high cheekbones into his eye sockets. I say that I was just showing Kodachi the Valiancy manga. For 30 minutes. I still can't really believe that I talked with Kodachi for 30 minutes straight. Of course I don't tell Akane this. Just me having talked with Kodachi was enough to set her off, why does she need to know how long it was?  
  
"How exactly did you end up whispering Valiancy's plot into her ear?"  
  
Oh, perfect. No-one could have timed it better. Let me fill you in, because right now, you're trapped in effect again, and you're gonna need some cause. For twenty-nine minutes I go on about Valiancy. For twenty-nine minutes, she listens and tells me all about the rhythmic gymnastics tournament she just placed first in, and how she thought of me when she won. Thought of how proud she would be if I had been there. Then, at the last possible minute, with Akane and Strangelouvre coming down the hall, Kodachi looks up at me, with those sparkling impossibly purple-gray eyes, and says;  
  
"Oh, my dear Ranma..."  
  
Help me.  
  
"...What must I do to prove my love for you, my sweet?"  
  
She throws her arms around me, the manga hits the deck, but I'm unable to follow. Kodachi locks her hands to her arms, pinning my elbows to my sides. Think straightjacket. Think bolo-snares. Think bear-trap. Only thing to do is gnaw off my torso, so I can get away.  
  
We're head to head, ear to ear. Of course, now she starts that seductive whisper.  
  
"Speak to me of your Valiancy, but Valiancy be not enough for me. Yeah, though I speak in the tongues of men and angels, but have not you..."  
  
When a girl starts putting the moves on you by quoting from the bible, it's way past time to run for your life. Song of Solomon, New International Kodachi Version. The way she moves her shoulders she is intentionally, blatantly smothering her tits into my pecs.  
  
What she's wearing is one of these casual three-piece dress ensembles. I think I saw this one the last time I went clothes shopping. It's black with red trims. The skirt comes down just over her knees, which are currently just over my knees. She's become adept at thinking up ways to stop me from running. Covering her master-lock arms is a light black probably silk over-shirt. There are no buttons on it, though. It's always meant to be open, so you can see the elastic shirt underneath, which right now, I can't see. I can't see it because it's currently pressed against my chest. Her breasts are rubbing through, and I can tell just by touch that they are bra-less in her elastic red and black industrial-fashion strength baby-T. The way the rubber-band, polyester-cotton mesh shirt is made, it holds both of her girls up; front and center. Ateeeen-SHUN. I can start to feel her nipples getting hard against my chest.  
  
Oh, for a hand grenade.  
  
I'm thinking about her vice-grip appendages spidered out over my legs and arms. Her nipples, which to me at this moment, are more like fangs. I'm thinking about her black and red dress. I'm thinking she's dressed and behaving just like a black widow, and I'm doomed.  
  
Right now my biological level is telling me 'She copulates, she eats. If she gets you, you're an entrée. Mating can't be worth this.'  
  
Now, because the timing is perfect, Akane makes her presence known.  
  
"Ranma, what are you doing!?"  
  
Out of the spider-fangs into the fire. Something like that. Startled, Kodachi lets her grip loose for a second, her legs swivel off of mine, and when she turns I'm treated to a good whack to the face when her pony-tail whips me. Now free, the scent of Kodachi's conditioner still in my nose. I jump to my feet, and I tell Akane no! She doesn't understand! I'm innocent! Suddenly I feel a whop on the head, and a shove that throws me right back into the seat, where Kodachi catches me. Here's the surprise, though. Akane never touched me. I look up, and there, Strangelouvre is taking off the sterilized, white latex glove from the hand he shoved me with.  
  
This is the first moment I've ever seen him, so I guess now would be a good time to tell you what he looks like. Lanky guy, European style. Just like the 6 foot tourist you see towering over the canopy of locals in Tokyo. Cheekbones so high, they seem to give him a smile, despite the fact that he's quite pissed off at me right now. His eyes are covered by the huge circles of dark-lensed glasses, the kind that tint when it gets real bright outside.  
  
The brighter the landscape, the darker the outlook. That's a metaphor, for something.  
  
I think I told you he's got this wheat field blonde to his hair. He's also dressed the way you expect a doctor would. White lab-coat, and three blue pens sticking out of his pocket. Monuments of medical education.  
  
I jump to my feet. Immediately I ask him what did he do that for? Like I said, he's taken off one of these gloves, and he smacks me across the cheek with it.  
  
My first thought is not how insulted I am.  
  
My first thought is not how angry I am.  
  
My first thought is where in the hell has that glove been.  
  
I look at the glove, I look at Akane's skirt, I look back at the glove. I put my hand to my cheek, and hope and pray that it's dry there.  
  
"How Cood yeu take Advanteege of souch a faire maidin az Kodachi?"  
  
Take-?  
  
Take-Ad?  
  
Take-Vantage?  
  
Assembling sentences after being smacked with, if you'll excuse the expression, a cunt-mit is a surprisingly difficult thing to do.  
  
"I weel not tolairate zis ouut landeesh behaviar. I challenge yeu to a deul mon amis."  
  
Dual? A word that makes sense. I tell him, sure, fine, yeah, good, yeah, cool, BITCHIN' bring it Frenchy. Anything goes martial arts. Pick the frikkin time.  
  
"Anyzing goes? Mon Amis, yoar fate eez naow seal-ed. Tomarrau. Neun."  
  
I'll be there. Kick ass and knock down gyno-man. Life is good. Now it's all about anticipation. Walking home, shadow boxing. Kick, punch, chestnut, punch, punch, kick. Sweet.  
  
Akane says "You're not fighting Dr. Strangelouvre. Got that?"  
  
The Hell I'm not, after what he did to me?  
  
"You got what you deserved. What were you doing with Kodachi anyway, lecher?"  
  
Holy shit. I told her already and she doesn't believe me. Not my fault. Not my fault. Not my fault. She wants to go yell at someone, yell at Kodachi. This is all Strangelouvre's doing. He wants a fight, he'll get one.  
  
"Look, you may not know this, but I need to keep seeing Dr. Strangelouvre."  
  
I think she's over reacting. Akane can always find another Gynecologist. She stops dead in her tracks and stomps both her feet on the ground.  
  
"WHAT DID YOU JUST SAY?"  
  
Cause and effect. You just said the secret word. Shit.  
  
Special doctor! Special doctor!  
  
Akane approaches me, grabs my collar and yanks me down to the pavement.  
  
"Ranma you jerk! He is my special doctor, and only he has the expertise to treat me."  
  
Why's that?  
  
"You don't know?"  
  
Know what?  
  
She pauses, and seems to calm down for a moment, her tightened cheeks relax, she breathes in a sigh. She's going to tell me now or this is just a calm before the storm. Place your bets.  
  
"Of course you don't know!" She starts to scream again; "IT'S NONE OF YOUR BUISNESS!"  
  
One airborne spiral uppercut later, and I'm landing in the park. Getting up, I dust myself off. I really pushed her buttons this time. From behind me I hear a familiar voice. My day is about to become perfect.  
  
"Ranma."  
  
Yo, Ryouga, what's up man?  
  
He whispers something.  
  
I ask him what he is said.  
  
Then he looks up and screams, "I DON'T FEAR YOU!" He comes at me with a strong right-hander that I just barely duck. I throw a subduing kick to his face that he catches.  
  
"No, not this time. Not now! Not ever!"  
  
His other hand grabs my foot, and throws me long. I land though, no prob.  
  
Come on Ryouga. I haven't seen him in two weeks, and THIS is how he says hello?  
  
"SHUT UP! I have to prove myself. My manhood. My future. My honor! Akane!"  
  
He balls himself up and acts like his torso is about to burst.  
  
"RANMA I AM NOT AFRAID OF YOU!"  
  
And Ryouga charges me. Hibiki being the glutton for punishment that he is, I decide to pull out my trump card first, and I chestnut fist to get him to back off. Ryouga completely surprised me though. He jumped straight up into the air, and takes the belly-flop position. His giant, roaring mouth and tiger skin clothes coming straight at me. He's belly flopping right into a rain of my strongest, quickest punches. I gotta hand it to him, this takes guts, so I stop punching, and I catch him. We both get knocked to the ground. I say, Ryouga, what's with you.  
  
"YOU JERK! YOU HELD BACK!"  
  
And then he hits me across the cheek, hard. So hard that the last thing I hear before I'm out is:  
  
"Hey, Hey, wake up, you jerk. Fight fair."  
  
And my head hits the ground.  
  
To be  
  
another add:  
-  
Chuck Palahniuk presents  
  
A study of Victor Mancini  
  
see also: Sexual addiction and frustration see also: Damaging maternal relationships see also: Medical school dropouts see also: Messianic delusional behavior see also: Colonial village reproduction see also: Psychological deterioration see also: The Heimlich maneuver  
  
"Choke"  
  
The most disturbing and tragic work of fiction I have ever read.  
  
"Gut-wrenching" isn't the right word, but it's the first that comes to mind.  
-----------------  
  
A 14 Rivers production. 


	4. Ranma on meddlesome people

Dr. Strangelouvre  
  
Cause 4:  
-  
I'm dreaming. Just to warn you, this won't be pretty. I'm naked, and I'm running away from a giant Komodo dragon lizard that wants to chomp off my dick.  
  
Cause and effect.  
  
Cause: probably the squid sushi.  
  
Anyway, you know what these dreams are like. You can't get away from the Komodo dragon or the boogey man or the French gynecologist, whoever is after you is waiting for you around every corner. Sure, it's just a dream, but it's my nuts on the line here. Anyway, somehow I find an alleyway that doesn't have a lizard shadow in it. So I run in and, of course it's a dead end. Here it comes, no way out now, he's coming. I can hear that rasp-rasp-rasp of his claws cutting across the ground towards me like I'm the discovery channel blue-plate special. Then nothing. Just as the rasp becomes it's loudest; silence. Just for a moment.  
  
Then the lizards' teeth come jutting out around of my groin and the razor-sharp fangs surround my kit.  
  
Oh.  
No.  
Please.  
No.  
God.  
No.  
Shit.  
No.  
  
The teeth stick out and gobble up my whole kit in one chomp, and then the teeth pull back inside me, leaving only toothless lips behind.  
  
That's when I wake up. I reach down to check my unit.  
  
My dream came true.  
  
I grab pop, and start shaking him.  
  
Dad wake up. I say. The lizard ate my dick. Wake up. Help me. It ate my frikking dick.  
  
He wakes up and places his hand gently but firmly on my shoulders. His steadfast eyes look at me through the twilight gleam in his specticals. He speaks softly and consolingly to me "Ranma..." Then he throws me across the room. I slam bug-on-windshield style into the wall.  
  
"Shut up boy, you just turned into a girl. You asshole."  
  
It's at that moment when I realize I'm Ranma. I got the whole cursed spring thing going for me. I'm a girl. I'm not supposed to be a girl, but I am. Envious? Don't be. Resting here upside-down on my head and shoulders, looking sideways at the floor, my whole life up to this moment comes out of the dream-world and into focus. The fianc's, the curse, the rivals, the fights, sushi. finally I remember today.  
  
Today.  
  
Dammit.  
  
After Ryoga clonked me into the netherworld, I came to, and hovering above me is yet another guy in a lab coat. I'm on my feet in a flash with my fists up. I ask if Strangelouvre sent him.  
  
"Who's Strangelouvre?"  
  
The nancy-ass, psycho-bitch loving, French gynecologist Strangelouvre.  
  
"Uhhhhh, no."  
  
Alright then, I say. So what does he want?  
  
"Walk with me, talk with me."  
  
So we head to a nearby bench and talk. Apparently, Ryoga couldn't sacrifice a goat this year. He wasn't about to be Bahr Mitzvahed, and he sure as hell wasn't gonna get circumcised. All the same; Ryoga was looking for a right of passage. That's where I fit in. All this according to his new psychologist, Dr. Gomez Noitaru. This guy's almost the polar opposite of Strangelouvre. He's got these slim, glancy brown eyes, and dark hair tied up bushy in a red bandana, just about my height. Anyway, he explains the last few days events to me. How he met Ryoga.  
  
The story is that he was traveling through the woods, just taking a hike, when he heard some crashing noises in the distance. He walked up and saw Ryoga breaking boulders with his fingertips. He goes up to Ryoga and asks;  
  
How do you do that?  
  
Ryoga replies;  
  
None of your business.  
  
Dr. Noitaru says;  
  
Come on, show me.  
  
Ryoga says;  
  
No.  
  
Anyway, this goes on for a while. Bottom line is, they start fighting. Kick, punch, block, punch, punch, chop, kick, elbow.  
  
Suddenly, Noitaru asks "How do you feel?"  
  
Knee, Heel, toe, lock, escape, grapple, plant, throw, roll, stand, kick, block.  
  
"I feel angry" Ryoga says.  
  
Head-butt. Backhand.  
  
"Talk about that."  
  
Kick. Leg-trap. block-trip. Hand-plant. Summersault. Flying kick.  
  
"I want to find my way to Akane, I want to defeat Ranma. But I can't find my way."  
  
"How did that make you feel?"  
  
In-air inverted quadruple scissor kick. Bullet dodging lean. Meteo.  
  
This goes on for like 30 minutes. All the while; Ryoga is going on and on about how much his life sucks, and Noitaru is just taking notes in his head. At the end of the thirty minutes, the two fighters, exhausted, and gasping faced one another, and Noitaru takes out a post-it pad and a pen and he screams at Ryoga.  
  
"B.F. Skinner School of martial-arts psychology FINAL ATTACK! DIAGNOSIS STRIKE!"  
  
He charges Ryoga.  
  
Ryoga picks up four rocks, and throws them up in the air.  
  
"Ryoga Hibiki special attack! Breaking-point-blank!"  
  
I don't even think I believe what I'm hearing. Ryoga, using only his pointer fingers, pushed the rocks into Noitaru's chest, and blasted each of them with the buksei-tetkets right against him. The exploding rocks send Noitaru flying up into the crotch of a tree, and he hung there like a stranded kite. Ryoga turns up his head in a cocky manner and turns around.  
  
He says. "Well, I guess I showed you. I school no one. I'm a marital artist for the sole purpose of defeating Ranma, so don't come asking me for any more advice, you hear?" Ryoga starts to walk away when Noitaru looks up and yells at him "Wait!" He says "Before you go, check the front of your bandana." Ryoga puts his hand up, and there's a little post it stuck there. He takes it off, and looks at it. His muscles clench. His blood boils. His eyebrows twitch. Veins start sprouting up all over him in anger.  
  
"What the Hell is this supposed to mean?"  
  
Fear.  
  
That was what was written on the post it. Noitaru's diagnosis: My continual victory and scorn over him has adjusted Ryoga's behavior. According to Dr. Noitaru, this is known as classical conditioning. Cause and effect. Having been attacked and beaten every time we meet, Ryoga now has an in-built mechanism to become lost, and avoid me at all costs. According to Noitaru, he's not lost, he knows exactly where he's supposed to go, and he will attempt to avoid going there as long as he can, in order to avoid me. His misdirection is only skin deep. Deep down inside, it's his fear keeping him from going anywhere.  
  
After Noitaru told me this I sat still for a few moments and I scratched my chin. I then turned to him.  
  
Horse...Shit.  
  
Ryoga needs a YOU ARE HERE sign in order to use a phone-booth and Ryoga's ALWAYS been like that. And now Noitaru gonna come along, and tell ME that it's MY fault?  
  
"Believe what you want, I'm only telling you because you are the stumbling block. According to my diagnosis, Ryoga will continue on this course until he rids you from his life."  
  
Getting Ryoga out of my life? Where do I sign?  
  
"I'm afraid it's not that simple." He says "He is going to have to defeat you, and he might do even worse, but don't worry. I'm going to do all that I can."  
  
Well, all right then. It's good to see the doctor is making some sense.  
  
"I'll make sure it'll be a spectacular fight."  
  
Excuse me?  
  
"The battle royale. He must crush you, in order to get back what he has lost and I'll make sure he can do his best."  
  
I grab him by the lab-coat. I'm about to redefine the word crush for him. What does he think he's doing. Ryoga is about as stable as nitro-glycerin, and he's talking like he can make a friggin' Chinese new-year out of it.  
  
"TWITCH-TOUCH!" He screams, and his fingers start tapping all around my head and chest, suddenly I feel really...good. My grip loosens, and my whole body does this kind of shiver, that makes me feel good all over. Noitaru steps back.  
  
"The twitch-touch is a classical conditioning attack. By applying pressure to both endorphin secreting glands under the skull, and motor neurons under the skin, I can force upon you a temporary euphoria associated with muscular twitching."  
  
I see.  
  
What the fuck did he just say?  
  
"It will feel good when you do this." His whole body limps up and he does this weird shiver. "Wuuuuugaaaaaaa." then he stands straight up again. "So you'll be doing that for the next hour."  
  
No wait just a damn wuuuuugaaaaaa.  
  
"I'm off to train with Ryoga. I'm going to learn that breaking-point if it kills me."  
  
Or if it kills me for that matter. Noitaru runs off into the distance and I'm left standing here, alone. Wuuuugaaaaaa.  
  
I headed home, twitching all the way. Just wait it gets better, to express my newly found inner-child of rage I meditate on kicking Strangelouvre's ass again. Everything's fine, until I realize that I'm kicking his ass against a gray background. It's at that moment when I realize, we never agreed on a place to fight. Ain't that a quarter-shitter with cheeze? I get home and run to the phone, picking up the phonebook, I'm halted wondering where to look.  
  
Gyencologists?  
Special doctors?  
Immigration?  
  
After about 10 minutes I find it. "Medical clinics-other."  
  
Wuuuugaaaaaaa.  
  
I dial the number. The secretary picks up.  
  
"Strangelouvre medical clinic, Rei speaking."  
  
Gimme Doctor Strangelouvre. Um, STAT.  
  
"May I ask who is calling?"  
  
I'm Ranma Saotome.  
  
"Oh, I see..." One moment please.  
  
I'm on hold.  
  
Unforgettable....That's what you are....Unfor-  
  
"Bonjour, Mon amis, Heve yeu call-ed to seureendar?"  
  
Fat chance, big guy. He never told me where to be tommarau, neun.  
  
"I deed too, yeu foergetfeul waif...In zee park, by zee pond."  
  
What I am about to do I shouldn't have done. I told him not to hang up the phone, and to tell me what exactly Akane's condition is.  
  
"Zat eez not yoar concearn."  
  
Actually, it is my concern. I know Akane pretty well, and I think for damn sure that he should inform me. So why shouldn't he tell me.  
  
"Well, because it eez not my concearn ezer. I am onlee fighting yeau to free zee Madame Kodachi from yoar clutcheza."  
  
For the record, I don't give a shit about Ko-  
  
"Sileance, yeau. Yoar voace eez giveeg me zee hedake. I weel tell yeau what you weesh to knau eef you defeat moi."  
  
Deal. The park. The pond. Tommarow. Noon. My fist. His face.  
  
"Yeau weesh!" and he hangs up.  
  
I slam the phone down. KICK HIS ASS KICK HIS ASS KICK HIS ASS.  
  
"So Ranma, you want to find out Akane's secret, aye?"  
  
Nabiki? When did she get here?  
  
"If the price is right, you can find out by tonight."  
  
She'll tell me? Wuuuugaaaaa. Nabiki was taken by a stunned look.  
  
"What the hell was that?"  
  
I sigh, and pull out 1000 yen. Nothing, I say. She takes the money.  
  
"I suppose that's enough for a hint."  
  
I'll take it.  
  
"If you're ever in Akanes room, start looking around."  
  
Yeah, sure, if she finds me, she'll kill me.  
  
"That's the price you pay, Ranma. Anyway, when you look around, you will have to look for something you WON'T find."  
  
Huh? I say. She steps closer, and starts to whisper.  
  
"You're not looking for something that isn't supposed to be there. You are looking for something that is supposed to be there, but it's not."  
  
Gimme my money back.  
  
"Sorry, Ranma, that's the breaks. Good luck!" And she runs out the door.  
  
Hey, just what I needed today. Now I've got a piping mad Akane with a concerning condition I still know nothing about. I'm lined up to fight a gynecologist, over freaking KODACHI of all things, Ryoga'a out to kick my ass more than ever. And NOW I'm down 1000 yen. Did I forget anything? Wuuuuugaaaaaa. Oh, fuck.  
  
I wait 'till night-fall, After our sushi dinner. So, Akane is in the bathroom, and it was my only shot. Kami of kamikaze be with me, I'm going in. I rummage through the underwear drawers. Bras, panties, socks, all good. Next drawer, shirts, blouses, training gui, all check out. Last drawer, skirts, pants, shorts. Nothing is missing. Only weird thing is in a junk basket on the dresser; an empty contact lens holder, no initials on it, but I know Akane doesn't wear contacts; she's got perfect 20/25 vision.  
  
Dammit, Nabiki.  
  
OK, I'll be brief; I found nothing missing wrong or out of place that could possibly relate to Strangelouvre. Either I'm missing something or Akanes got a messed up way of wearing contact lenses. I'm about to go through the last desk drawer, when I hear a voice behind me.  
  
"What are you doing, Ranma?"  
  
Kasumi.  
  
I spin around. She's wearing sweatpants and a t-shirt. Nothing! Just looking for a pencil I lost.  
  
"Oh, dear, are you sure you lost it in here?"  
  
No, no, so I'm checking everywhere, guess I'll quit for the night, though. Around Kasumi I can picture a wreath of flames, if only she was wearing...that.  
  
Where's you're nightgown, Kasumi? I ask in timid curiosity.  
  
"Oh, in the wash. Why do you ask Ranma?"  
  
"RANMA? RANMA IS IN MY ROOM!?" It's Akane. She races down the hall, fresh from brushing her teeth, Glass of water in hand, she douses me, and throws me into the hall.  
  
"YOU PERVERT! Don't ever come in here without permission."  
  
"Oh, don't be hard on him." Kasumi pleads.  
  
"I'll go easy on him WHEN HE STOPS BEING PERVERTED!"  
  
After chasing me down the hall with a Shanai, I finally retreated to my room for the night. Little did I know the dick-eating komodo dragons were waiting for me. Thus, here I am, Final effect. I've collapsed on my belly away from my bed.  
  
Don't move me. Don't touch me. I'll sleep here if I can just sleep.  
  
This whole day has been a bad dream.  
  
More book madness:  
  
I could change my hair.  
Would you love me?  
I could change my way of thinking.  
Would you love me?  
I could change my face.  
Would you love me?  
I could change my occupation to stealing drugs from the elderly.  
Would you love me?  
I could change my sex.  
Would you love me?  
I could change you.  
Would you love me?  
Give me love.  
Flash!  
  
Chuck Palahniuk's INVISIBLE MONSTERS  
  
I read it. I enjoyed it. Sorry mom, sorry God.  
---------  
  
OK, here's the new spell checked, and slightly updated version. Now it's back to studying for finals. Merry Christmas, Ranma and Palahniuk-heads. Also a little upset, so I'm doing an MST invite. Of all my works, my "Dr. strange" series(-Louvre and -Waff) have been the weirdest, and supposedly most MSTable. Though I only once ever tried to make a BAD fanfic, I've defiantly made a few that were simply too unorthodox for public good, and I do that for good reason. This particular one I'm going out of my way be incredibly unorthodox. I want this fic to be so unorthodox that it's anti-orthodox, but I don't want it to be bad. So I'll admit that I was hoping to squeeze an MST off of this fic. Any of you wise guys got the guts to take me on? One great set up for  
  
A 14 rivers production 


	5. Ranma on TFM

Cause 5 -------  
  
OK, let's get technical. It starts with a single gene. This gene is called TFM. If you have good TFM, you are normal, if you have bad TFM, you're like Akane.  
  
Simple enough.  
  
I wake up, and the sun is beaming down upon my stiff-in-eight-places neck. Pop's not around, and the clock says I got three hours before the fight. I roll to my knees, aching and still tired, I trudge downstairs. Kasumi; lovely, friendly Kasumi has my breakfast all waiting for me. Pop, the giant panda, is playing shogi with Mr. Tendo on the porch. Akane's playing dress-up with an all to familiar little black pig, who's giving me a stare of hatred so strong, that it could burn a hole in a shag-carpet. Nabiki's counting up the earnings from her latest extortion scam, which I'm told involved a ten person network, 2 hidden cameras and a fifty page incriminating document. See no evil, hear no evil. Lastly; the glorified, elderly master of the school of anything goes martial arts is presently swimming in a basket of freshly stolen bras and panties ranging from smooth silk to lusty lace with lots of casual every day and kinky secret stuff in between.  
  
Welcome to my morning.  
  
My first thought isn't my stiff neck, it isn't sleeping on the wooden floor, not the pig glaring at me from across the room, it isn't even Akane's mysterious condition. What's on my mind is Strangelouvre. Call it an obsession if that fits for you. He's everything I'd want to beat up in a person. Kodachi, rudeness, bad karma and vaginal sciences I don't need any more of these things my in my life. I'd say trust me, but you know already; my life needs simplification, not complication. I'm going into a man to man fight, but it's when I take my first sip of my morning miso soup that I realize that I'm a girl.  
  
This is last night all over again. I wish I could realize these things sooner. Picture it, I go to fight Strangelouvre with this tits and ass body of mine. I most definately wouldn't live it down. Like I said, this is a man-to-man fight, and that is the whole point. Sure, I may turn into a girl, but what I am is a guy. I am a guy, dammit, a guy with too many women (myself included) trying to drag my life down. I deal with enough girls to have to deal with their doctors too. Sometimes I wish I didn't have to put up with women at all, ever. Mating really can't be worth all this. I finish my soup and head to the bathroom to draw a bath.  
  
If there is a loss-of-funtcion mutation located on the TFM gene in your genetic make-up, well, I would say you're in trouble, but you can't do anything about it. The damage hs been done, so I'd be telling you a little too late.  
  
How late? Well, how old are you?  
That, plus 9 months too late.  
  
This is all the vital stuff they teach guys like Strangelouvre. This is the nitty-gritty, urgent knowledge. Everything I ever wanted to know about TFM loss of function mutation, and it's effect on human embryological development, but was afraid to ask; third edition.  
  
Are you paying attention?  
  
Hit yourself.  
  
My whole body seems to melt in this hot bath. The neck ache subsides, fades and trails away to become a warm and fuzzy-feeling weather front, working it's way south.  
  
I open my eyes, and look straight up at the light that hangs above the bath. The bright-white light is burning a flashing-blue spot into my vision, and in the burn spot, I can see myself beating Strangelouvre. This time, complete with the proper backdrop. In this light I see my chestnut fist. In this light I see him hitting the ground, wincing. In this light I see my triumphant victory. In this light I see the shadow of a hand that comes down over my face, and shoves me all the way underwater.  
  
I look up through the splashing waves, and the glare of the light, and the silvery rims of all the bubbles draining out of my lungs, while my arms are flailing up to grab something, like a pound of flesh. I look up and what I see is the silhouette of Mr. Big-fang wearing just his bandana. I swipe a punch at his face, and he jumps back, letting me up for some air.  
  
He just stands there, naked and smiling, like the marble archaic statue of some great Greek hero. His face appears to me out of a halo of subtle blue and white flashes from the burn-spot of the light I'm not looking at anymore.  
  
I'm not looking at it anymore, but I can still see it.  
  
That's a metaphor, for something.  
  
"How did that make you feel?" He asked, sounding like he knew he didn't have ask at all.  
  
I say it made me feel like kicking him in the face, and seeing how many teeth I could knock out. This guy really has no shame, if he can't postpone his little right of passage or whatever long enough for me to take a frikking bath. His smile just gets wider, then he turns away from me, and pours himself a glass of water from the sink.  
  
"Ranma, How do you think I got here?"  
  
I ask him did he hear me or not? If he doesn't want any broken bones, or concussions, he leaves right now. Otherwise, I swear to God I'll beat his ass worse than ever. This is the moment.  
  
Fight mechanism. It's the moment when you start pumping adrenaline, it's the moment you know you're going to course all your energy into fist after fist of demolishing power. Your muscles tense, your heart pounds, your whole body feels charged like an electrified fur coat. This is the moment that I was saving for Strangelourve, and knowing that Ryoga is taking some of that energy away, and making me use it on him, that just makes me want to fight him even more. Acting like he doesn't even hear me, he turns to face me, taking a sip from his water glass, then setting it down, smooth as wax-paper. He says to me;  
  
"Up the stairs, turn left, down the hall. It was that easy. Dr. Noitaru is right, all I have to do is confront my fear of you, and I can truly become a man. I'll never be lost ever again."  
  
Crack. Crack. Crack. That's my knuckles. I don't say a word, standing there, naked and ready to unleash. He can get out now, or the beat-down shall commence.  
  
"Something on your mind?" He asks  
  
I tell Ryoga I'm happy that he's confronted his fear, I'm happy he's found his way around a two story building, I'm happy his courage is coming to him. I tell him that's as far as my happiness stretches. Everything else about me is massively pissed.  
  
Get the Hell out of here.  
  
"Ranma, I hate you! And I'll be damned if I do anything you tell me to do."  
  
It rains, and it rains, and it rains. Finally, the damn bursts.  
  
I jump out of the bath, and I'm going to see how hard I can kick his face. Picture a perfect set of five toe prints indenting into Ryogas forehead. Now picture them 3 inches deeper. This probably would have worked, had not Ryoga still had his glass of water. Cold water might as well be kryptonite.  
  
Splash.  
  
I'm wet with cold water, cause and effect, now I'm a girl. My face kicking plan I quickly abandon, and I try just to keep myself covered up. Ryoga, he's such a bastard. No sooner do I land then he grabs my wrists. He swings me back against the wall, pins my arms down, and presses his body against mine.  
  
Fear mechanism. It's that moment when adrenaline starts pumping in your veins. Your throught clenches up, and you can't breathe, let alone scream. It's that moment when your whole body shivers and tenses, stresses and pulsates. All the strength you muster drains into panic and confusion. My breasts pressed against his chest, his tight grip around my wrists, pressed up against the bathroom tile. With the heat of my panic, the fresh hot vapors from the tub and his body like radiation all over me; I swear I'm being steam-cooked.  
  
"You threaten me all you want, Ranma. I know your weakness, and I'm not afraid to use it against you." he says, "I'm not afraid, period."  
  
His eyes look into mine, but they seem to look through me, this is a speech delivered to the warm tile walls. I feel like nothing. The invisible man/boy/girl, whatever. That's not the point. The point is, there is no point. I try to flex my arms forward, and he just torques my small wrists right back into the wall. The point is I can't make a point. I'd try to kick, but I don't dare move my legs, lest I get more than I ever asked for. One wrong move, and I'm...you could say...fucked.  
  
We stare eye to eye, both our chests heaving. My breasts touch his pecs with each breath we take.  
  
Together.  
Apart.  
Together.  
Apart.  
  
The worst of enemies in the worst of situations. Ryoga says that Dr. Noitaru told Ryoga to be ruthless. If Ryoga wants to break his own fear, he has to attack in ways the old Ryoga wouldn't. So this is Noitaru's idea, not Ryogas'. Noitaru told him to subdue me at my weak point. Ryoga says he didn't want to, but that Noitaru said that what he wanted wasn't the point.  
  
But, if you ask me, the point is this is pointless.  
  
Ryoga is the one who's here. I don't care what Noitaru told him to do, Ryoga is the one attacking me. He has to listen to me, he has to stop, he has to find some other way to do this right of passage thing, or he'll end up hurting everyone involved.  
  
You want to know the best way to shut someone up? Put your lips over their lips.  
  
Shock mechanism. My jaw clenches up. His tongue slides across my teeth. Nothing makes sense. Adrenaline, confusion, anger, surprise, fear all swirl together, and dissolve into a shock that BAM hits your brain like a jump-start and fizzles every nerve like a fuse. How did this happen? This can't be happening. All your quivering muscles clench and knot. Your lips, his lips.  
  
How did that make you feel?  
  
This can't be real.  
This can't be going on.  
This can't be happening.  
  
Ryoga pulls back, and looks into my wide eyes, and flushed red face.  
  
"Ranma" Ryoga says "I must defeat you. I must become a man. I'll see clearly then. I will be complete when you are gone."  
  
He jumps back, and bolts out the window, leaving me standing there. The light I'm not looking at is still burned into my vision, and I can still feel the Ryoga that I'm not pressed up against. He's left a giant Ryoga-sized cold print from my shoulders down to my knees, and over my lips. Now I'm all alone, seeing and feeling things that aren't even there.  
  
This is when my back slides down the tiles. This is when I rest my head on my knees, and clutch my legs to my breasts. I curl up in a ball and I try to feel warmth in all the places Ryoga left cold. This is where I stay, crouched for a quarter of an hour, while I cry.  
  
TFM is a gene that is maternally inherited. That means you get it from your mom. If this applies to you, that is if you have a TFM gene, then you got it from the egg cell that was fertilized by the sperm cell. This formed a complete 46 chromosome single human cell that was you.  
  
Not everyone uses their TFM gene, and they get along fine without it. Some people use their TFM gene, and they do fine with it. But then there are people like Akane. People that had the divine and beautiful miracle of life fuck them over big time. People with a busted TFM gene will need to have a special doctor later on in their life.  
  
They'll need a doctor like Dr. Strangelouvre. A doctor like the guy I have to defeat. I dried my tears, and splashed myself with some warm water. When that water hit me, no joke, all my sadness  
  
Splash  
  
turned into anger. I couldn't be sad for myself anymore, I could only be angry at Ryoga, Strangelouvre, Noitaru. I have become a walking, ticking two fisted time-bomb, wanting and waiting to go off at something. I got dressed fast, and headed out to the dojo for some warming-up. Kicking and punching the morning away, I was breaking cinder-blocks when Akane walked in.  
  
The TFM gene encodes for a receptor. Every cell in your body has got receptor proteins on their membranes, they pick up little bits of junk in your blood, and when they do, they tell the cell to speed up, slow down, do this, do that, live, die, any number of commands. I know this is boring, but it's important. I mean there she is, and this changed her whole life, but I didn't know it at the time.  
  
"Ranma, don't fight Strangelouvre." She says "I'll be honest, I didn't even want you to come with me to that doctors office yesterday."  
  
She went on and on about how she was sorry he slapped me with the glove, and got into an argument with him. So it's not my fault, and I don't have to fight anyone. She just doesn't get it. I refuse to be weak I refuse to back down, I refuse to be hurt, I refuse to lose. I am fighting Strangelouvre.  
  
"Then I'm coming with you." She says. But no she's not.  
  
"Yes I am." She says "He's my doctor after all."  
  
Akane says this is her doctor, but this is my fight. This is my battle, and there's no way I'm going to back down. There's no way I'm going to ask for support. This is something I have to do, and Akane has nothing to do with it.  
  
When all the guys were saying, 'Let's go build a boat to sail to the Americas', or 'Let's go find the highest mountain in the world, climb to the top, and become Gods' or 'let's build space ships, and lunar rovers and terra-formers, and let's make space our playground' What were the women saying? I don't really want to know. Because I'm pretty sure it was somewhere along the lines of 'Let's go get new curtains' and 'Let's add a second bedroom' or 'Let's switch to naturally decaffeinated coffee made with Arabica beans' That sounds about right. Not very glamorous, but hey, that's just fine. That's the way it is. If men will continue to seek out the next plain of existence, and if women will continue to be there to make that new plain livable for us all, then cause and effect, goddammit, alright.  
  
Man Woman Cause Effect Vice Versa. Great.  
  
What does Akane want, if she wants me to back down, she's not taking the attitude of a martial artist. She doesn't have to like the fact that I'm fighting but she could at least support me.  
  
Akane asked if she should support me at all, since she's known Strangelouvre longer than she knew me.  
  
Look, I say, if she wants to root for her 'Special Doctor' Over me, than that's just great. I turn and leave. She follows.  
  
So if TFM is like a receptor you can think of it as kind of like a post-office. Any letter that is addressed to TFM gets sent to TFM, cool? Now let's say that something is wrong with the p.o. box, like it has no address on it. Picture a hormone as a signal, a letter, that is addressed to TFM. Some old mailman is handed this urgent letter addressed to TFM, and he goes to work and checks up and down the line, but can't find the right box. The letter never gets delivered, the message is lost. All this happened before Akane was even born.  
  
3-foot long French bread. Strangelouvre stood there in the park at noon with 2 loaves of French bread. Hi Kodachi. This is just to weird. Kodachi is here for no apparent reason, and Strangelouvre has bread.  
  
"Oui, Oui, mon amis. I inviteed haer teu obsearve yoeur undeuing."  
  
I strike an attack stance, and I say come on, bring it.  
  
"Yeau aer ov zee skuel ov anyzing goes mershal arts, yeas?"  
  
I say yeah, anything goes, only pronounced properly.  
  
"Mon amis, zis ees what goes." And he tosses me a loaf of the bread, I catch it.  
  
"I chelenge yeau to..." and he smiles, sneers "French-bread-fuu."  
  
This is not a test. six weeks into development. The whole body is armed with these TFM receptors. Every cell is awaiting this signal, if it does get the signal, it will go one way, if it doesn't get the signal, it goes another way. But since the receptor is broken, the signal never makes it. It's the opposite to the burn that was in my eye. The light is there, she should have seen it, but not one part of her had the ability to see it. Strangelouvre explained all this to me, after he beat me.  
  
He also explained French-bread-fuu before he beat me. Anyone can hit a guy with a stick, an axe or anything hard and do damage, but there was a sect of martial arts, located in France that asked the question, could something as soft as a loaf of bread be used to win a fight. The answer was yes. Strangelouvre challenged me to this fighting style, and as an anything-goes martial artist I had to accept. The rules were simple.  
  
1. You do not break the bread.  
2. You do not break the bread.  
3. You cannot attack the body with your extremities or any weapons other than the loaf.  
4. When the bread is broken, or when one of us is on the ground the fight is over.  
  
And that's it. He can't be serious. This is just a joke.  
  
"Thesis no joke, Mon amis. I aem quite frank. Befoar we begin, howevair, tell moi. Why deu you weesh to know Mamuaselle Akane's condision?"  
  
At that moment, even I wondered. I couldn't get into a more 'none of my fucking business category than this, but ever since I found out about it, I've wanted to know. I told Strangelouvre that it was because we live together.  
  
We don't like each other, or anything like that, we're just familiar with each other.  
  
"Really?" He asked "How seu?"  
  
I sigh. I sigh because she's my fiancée.  
  
"Iz zat zee treuss? Zen yeau do have ze right to kneau, but before I tell yeau, fight moi."  
  
He strikes an aggressive attack pose, the tip of his bread pointed at my head.  
  
"Aer yeau ready, mon amis."  
  
Yeah, I say, bring it on. There's no way he can knock me down with a loaf of bread.  
  
That's when he charged me. I took a defensive pose to deflect the bread off my wrist, and see if I couldn't trip him as he raced by. There was nothing in the rules about tripping. I couldn't tell you what really happened. What I do know is, that when he hit that bread across my wrist it hurt. Then I saw a blur, and the next thing I knew, I was on the ground, looking at my piece of bread, flipping through the air. It was coming down toward me. before I could even get my hands up in front of my face, Strangelouvre swung at it, and it broke into two pieces that landed by my left leg and two feet off my right ear. He then placed the butt of the bread in my abdomen. It hurt. He then brought it up and poked my chest with it. It was surprisingly soft.  
  
"Mon amis, yeau were unprepair-ed for ziz battle yeau are defeated, and heve been humilateed before bolse zee maddame Kodachi and zee mamauazelle Akane. Yeau must walk home in defeat..."  
  
He kneels down and gets real close to me to say this next part. I want you to picture it. You pick up the letter. You open it up. The urgent message that no-one read is inside. You unfold the paper and you look at it. It says:  
  
This is testosterone, repeat this is testosterone.  
  
Abort female development, initiate male development.  
  
Urgent!  
  
Call off-female development and begin male development.  
  
The following programs are to be aborted:  
  
Vagina, Mammary gland, labium major, labium minor, Clitoris, Müllerian duct Enhancement. ETC.  
  
The following programs are to be initiated:  
  
Penis, prostate, scrotum, vas defrans, seminal vesicle, Wolfian duct enhancement. ETC.  
  
We are becoming a boy.  
  
Repeat  
  
We are becoming a boy.  
  
The message ends and no-one read it.  
  
Strangelouvre looks at me, he says;  
  
"And your fiancé has testicles."  
  
What can I say?  
  
Holy fucking shit.  
  
to be (I hate AOL, but it's a free e-mail account, so I'll take it)  
  
Final ad:  
  
Chuck Palahniuk presents:  
  
A man.  
He is everything you could ever want to be,  
and he has a vision.  
  
He will take you into a new world, where you will be the proud ruler of all that you see.  
  
Or he will kill you trying to take you there.  
  
He refuses to let you live in shame, where you are exploited by everyone, even yourself.  
  
If he has to break you to set you free, he will do it, and you will love him for it.  
  
He is the savior, that will rescue us all from the bondage of convenience.  
  
But he will only save you if you do exactly as he tells you to do.  
  
I  
  
WANT  
  
YOU  
  
TO  
  
HIT  
  
ME  
  
AS  
  
HARD  
  
AS  
  
YOU  
  
CAN  
  
Fight Club  
  
Read the damn book.  
----------  
  
I am Joe's 


	6. Ranma on Akane

Dr. Strangelouvre  
  
Cause 6 -------  
  
So Akane has nads. Whoda thought?  
  
I'm guessing you're still trying to deal with this, so let me reassure you. It's more normal than you'd imagine, but it's scarier than you'd think. She looks normal, but that is the freaky part. A girl who grew up with testicles, you would imagine as so much more warped and hideous than someone like, oh say; Akane. The problem with a girl who has testicles is that they're so deceptive.  
  
Testicular Feminization Syndrome (TF) is simply anatomical deceit.  
  
Mind you, I've seen Akane naked before. Envious? Don't be. It happened the first day I met her, and three times since then, all of which happened regrettably and were followed up by painful consequence. Seeing naked girls can't be worth this. But from these incidences I can say trust me, she looks like a girl, head to toe. No odd extremities, no freaky other mutations. She looks like a girl. Hips, legs, belly, all normal. She even grew tits, for crying out loud. Ovaries aren't as easy to grow.  
  
Blue skies, smiling at me. On my back here in the park, I'm thinking that chaos is so much easier to deal with when it's absolutely quiet. A bird is chirping now. Does it have testicles? Does it have ovaries? Does it need one but have the other? It doesn't matter. Those lucky peckers.  
  
I don't know how long it's been since the fight. Strangelouvre walked away after telling me the news, every last gory detail. I really wonder if he hates me as much as I hate him, because I can tell he enjoyed informing me that everything I've been led to believe is a lie. So many things are becoming clear now. It's like Nabiki said, to look for things that aren't there.  
  
Burns in your vision.  
  
Look for what's not there, of course. In Akane's case it's things like tampons and maxi pads. I never found one while I was sneaking around in her room, and this is the reason. Why would Akane need those? She doesn't even have a uterus, and she doesn't go through periods, either. Shame, she looked so much like a normal girl. Too much.  
  
I know it's not her fault that she developed testis as an embryo, and didn't realize it, but suddenly BOOM it's my problem. I am engaged to a girl with nads and no uterus. And there's nothing I can do about it. The deal is done, and according to our fathers, we're stuck with each other, regardless of what we really are.  
  
All human beings are taken in 'as is' condition. We are Earth's race of used cars, just trying to sell ourselves to each other.  
  
Here's a great, almost new model, with good mileage, pouty lips, long hair, fresh spark plugs, wonderful personality, cozy interior, and headlights that could blind you! Wow, Tendou! You convinced me! Thanks! Guess pop forgot to ask about what was under the hood.  
  
Right now, inside my fiancé, where her ovaries should be, there are two pieces of human tissue screaming out;  
  
"No! No! This can't be right! I'm a boy dammit! Not a girl! I am a boy!"  
  
Oh, I know what you're thinking, and don't go there.  
  
I was on my back, and she came over, she looked down at me. The fact that I didn't move after Strangelouvre talked to me had her worried. Her dress, her eyes, her face, her breasts, she had me completely fooled all this time.  
  
"Are you alright, Ranma?"  
  
Give her an Oscar.  
  
I didn't move. I didn't speak. I just looked up at her. She crouches down, her hands on her knees.  
  
"Ranma," She said that part sounding really concerned, then she went on "are you alright?"  
  
All the landscape about Akane has been brightened.  
  
And the brighter the landscape, the darker the outlook.  
  
I lean back, and watch a cloud that is passing overhead, but Akane wasn't to be ignored. She leans over, and puts her whole head right in my way.  
  
The rest of the story is that after her body couldn't receive the message that she was a boy, she became a girl. Her testicles got put where her ovaries should be. No one could find them, and so, no-one found out that she had testicles, until she turned 9. Her periods never started, even though she was obviously going through puberty. So a concerned Mr. Tendou brought her in to Dr. Tofu and he recommended a SPECIAL doctor; guess who? Akane would later tell me that the worst part of the whole ordeal those days was the surgery. When you have TF you don't get a uterus, and there's a huge slab of tissue right where your vagina should be. You are, in fact only about 1 inch deep. Dr. Strangelouvre carved out Akane's vagina with his own two hands. All in a days work. This is why she didn't want me to fight him, this is the secret I wasn't supposed to find out. After the vaginal extension operation, Dr. Strangelouvre said he had to take Akane's testis out, but Akane wouldn't allow it. One surgery was enough. Hands off. So her balls got left in. This has been a Tendou family secret for 7 years. Dr. Strangelouvre was the only other person who knew.  
  
Just to dispel your fears, I guess I'd better tell you that they are fine. Both Kasumi and Nabiki are fine. They are, I've been since told, perfectly normal girls. They each are really, really, no lie girls. Akane is the only son.  
  
Just look at her look at me. Right in my face. "Ranma, are you all right!?"  
  
I'm fine...How do you feel?  
  
"Ranma," she said "You guys were talking for a long time after the fight. Did...He..."  
  
Right now my biological level is talking like Akane. Die. Dry up and die. Die. Die. Die.  
  
It'd be the mercy killing of a youth in Asia.  
  
My head leans to the left, so I don't have to look in her eyes. The Tom-boy, emphasis on boy. When you think about it, everything about Akane makes sense, after you convince yourself that she has huevos. Really, think about it. The martial arts, the attitude, the boy-hating, the roar. Girls don't roar like her, and neither do guys, only Akane.  
  
I am Akane, hear me roar.  
  
Miss testy who missed testosterone.  
  
Most leading experts in the study of testicular feminization agree that there is no valid link between TF and unusually masculine behavior.  
  
To those experts, I say that there is someone I'd like you to meet.  
  
I'm not looking at her when I tell her that the Doc told me everything. He told me about the testicles, the TFM mutation, the surgery, the secret, the bright, bright landscape of Akane. I'm not looking at her when she pulls back, landing on her ass in shock and alarm.  
  
I'm not looking at her when she says "He...He told you? What did he tell you?"  
  
You already know. She probably knows too, he told me all of it. The only reason he told me anything was because I asked. I wanted to know, and he told me everything there was to know.  
  
I didn't want to look at her, but she grabbed me by the collar and jammed her weepy-eyed face right into my face. Those big eyes, puddles of tears forming in the corners. The sniffle in her nose, and that rasp of anger in her voice.  
  
"How could you?" She stands up, and drags me to my knees "It's none of your business!" Now they start falling, tears streaming down her cheeks. Her eyes close, but that doesn't stop them. I'm so stupid, you don't do something this dumb.  
  
Like an idiot, I want to console her, so I say, so you have a disorder, talk about that. It's OK, really, talk about it. Her eyes open, then tighten to a squint of anger, her teeth clench. I am so incredibly stupid; cause.  
  
"Talk about it?" She screams, "Talk about it?"  
  
In my dream, I can sense the house burning down around me. It feels like this.  
  
"Damn you!"  
  
She decks me in the nose, which immediately starts to pour out red as I fall; effect. See how it works? The whole world works like this. I'm on my back again, only now I'm bleeding. This has been a pretty emotional two days; if you ask me. I wonder what would have happened if she fell into the cursed spring instead of me. Maybe we'd both be closer to normal.  
  
"Shut up," she says. She reaches into her pocket, and pulls out a pile of tissues. She throws half at me, the other half she presses to her eyes, and nose, and she left me there. I wad up some of the tissues and jam them into my nose. The blood trickles down the back of my sinuses and soon I can start to swallow it, as I look up into the sky. My hunger gets the better of me, and I reach over for a loaf of the French bread that the doctor broke. I reach up, dust it of, and break myself off a piece.  
  
She's such a bitch, I tell myself between chews. I swallow the bread, and pop in another shred. She's uncute too, I say that while trying to keep the food suspended in my mouth so I don't choke. Swallow, eat, repeat. Plus, she's not even supposed to be a-and the bolus of food drops down my throat, and I'm forced to my knees, as I gag it up. I was coughing when I heard her.  
  
"Why Ranma, darling, are you all right?"  
  
Kodachi, great. Just what I needed. I wonder why Kodachi was here to begin with. Kodachi said that Dr. Strangelouvre convinced her to come after she met him in the library. She told me that she originally didn't want to come, because she was sure I would have won the fight, but after Dr. Strangelouvre said that he would use French-bread-fuu, she wasn't so certain.  
  
"I was hoping, darling, that after I didn't show up, The good doctor would be defeated, and all his gloating and attempts to impress me would be for naught. The man teaches me his tongue, and I'd prefer our relationship to be left at that, unlike him. So I left his defeat, and my victory up to you, Ranma, darling. Surely I have enough confidence in you, my love, that I needn't have shown up to encourage your victory."  
  
Why can't Akane think like that, I wonder.  
  
"However, Ranma dear, one who has never fought in the style of French-bread-fuu, is almost assured to loose to a master such as Strangelouvre. Oh, How tragic that I should live to see the day upon which my Herculean champion be felled by a lowly baked good."  
  
Some would call this sympathizing, some would call it pity, I call it rubbing my nose in it. I'm getting the hell out of here, so I get up to leave.  
  
"Ranma, wait." she pleads "I want you to come to my home, tomorrow, at sunset." She's bending over, to pick up one of the broken loaves. I don't want to see her, I don't want her pity, and I don't want to visit her house.  
  
"But I know what you do want." She said. That got my attention, so I turned to face her. She had taken up the single black rose from the pocket of her shirt. She placed it under her nose, and took a single sniff.  
  
"I know what you want, and I can give it to you."  
  
She tossed the rose in the air, and when the bloom reached the apex of its rise, she jumped up at it. With one swing of the bread, the whole rose blasted apart. I stood there, with black rose petals falling all around me. I knew what Kodachi wanted. She wanted me.  
  
"I want you, darling." Like I said "I want you to learn French-bread-fuu. I want you to defeat Dr. Strangelouvre for me. I want you to meet me tomorrow, at sunset."  
  
Faust sold his soul to the devil, in order to gain all the wisdom in the world. Me? I think I've just cut a much sweeter deal. Kodachi took out her ribbon, from wherever she keeps it, and in a vertigo of flower-petals and nylon, she disappeared from my sight.  
  
I want to learn French-bread-fuu. I want to defeat Dr. Strangelouvre. I want Ryoga begging for mercy. I want Victory.  
  
I take the tissues out. They've been sculpted into perfect molds of my nostrils, and have held their shape thanks to my mucus and crusted blood.  
  
But most of all;  
  
I don't want Akane.  
  
--------------------  
  
Notes: I feel this chapter is a little rushed and a little short, I put it out, really just to dispel confusion about Akane's condition. I wrote a paper that included a whole segment on TF, and ever since then, whenever I thought Akane, I thought Testicular Feminization. Akane isn't a hermaphrodite, and I am not Oscar.  
  
If you meet a girl with TF, you won't know it unless she tells you. If that statement isn't correct then my paper deserved a D-. Other Sexual development disorders, like hermaphroditism, and turner's syndrome are pretty obvious to the naked eye, even on a fully clothed subject. I just wanted to throw in a plausible twist to the Ranma universe.  
  
In case you don't think you can cope with my unsettling plot, you should know ahead of time; You're reading the work of a guy who likes reading Chuck Palahniuk, Franz Kafka, and the New Testament. I'm all about twisted twists, so they'll keep on coming. I like writing about people turning on society, society turning on people, and believing there is a God who made absolutely EVERYTHING, even quasars and yet, he still loves us and our tiny little world enough to be tortured to death for us and it. This is who you're dealing with, so hang  
  
A 14 rivers production. 


	7. Ranma on ambivalence

Dr: Strangelouvre  
  
Cause: 7  
  
Ranma on Ambivalence --------  
  
The first thing Kodachi asked me is where's Ranma? She doesn't say it like that. I'll give you a hint; the word hussy is involved. You can tell she was ready to train. Train her beloved Ranma, anyway. She had two loaves of bread under her arm, and had chosen as her sparring outfit; white silk embroidered pajamas. The first one, two, three buttons on her top are already undone. Oh, Kodachi. At least she was sensible with her make-up. A fourth layer would have really killed the effect.  
  
I tell her not to worry.  
  
"Don't tell me what to and not to do, you redheaded wench. I gave explicit instructions that Ranma-darling come here in order to be trained, and I'll not have the likes of you adjusting my whims."  
  
If you thought I was going to come here in my guy form, you're just stupid. I try to keep my contact with Kodachi as minimal as possible as often as possible.  
When she does push her way into my life, I try to keep it on a purely unromantic level.  
  
I had a choice. It was more like multiple choice:  
A) Go to Kodachi as a guy and risk being drugged and raped B) Go to Kodachi as a girl and learn bread fuu C) Don't go to the Kuno's and deal with Akane D) Talk to dad.  
  
At this point, you're probably fairly impressed that I'd rather deal with Kodachi than Akane. That's how much I can't stand her. For the best example of this, consider yesterday.  
  
I want you to picture yourself wandering around town after being backed up, and bashed with a baguette. Everything you've been led to believe just got reversed on you. Bread loaves can kill. Women are men in disguise. Black could be white, and if it's not white, then it's still probably just some random shade of gray. You try to find relief in food. Ukyo serves up a beautiful combo okonomiyaki. You can't take your eyes off of her. Her hands are small, and her fingers are narrow. I look back at my big right side paw, with bulging knuckles and veins that pop out like ant colony tunnels when I make a fist. I look back at Ukyo. Ribbon in her hair, slender legs.  
  
Call this an autopsy, if you will. The anatomy of Ukyo: Girl. A normal autopsy of a female, except in this case; the observer is closer to feeling dead than the subject. The anatomy of Ukyo: Girl? At this point I'd second-guess everything, if it would bring me back to life.  
  
You are as dead to the world as the world is confusing to you.  
  
Looking at Ukyo I'm thinking who is this person? She's got an unwanted boyfriend who fooled me into believing he was a she. Hell, I thought for sure Ukyo was a boy for a damn good portion of my life. Uut-chan is a girl ranks among the top 10 'Holy fucking shits' of my life, along with Akane's testicles, and cursed spring suprise. That's the way it turned out though. Even with me as a girl and a guy, and Akane a guy who wound up as a girl, I can at least say Ukyo is a Woman.  
  
The anatomy of Ukyo: GIRL!  
Girl?  
Girl!  
  
In my confusion, and dissolusion, I became a stare machine; sitting, eating set of binoculars, focused on her. That's when she walked over to me, tilted her body over so that her entire upper torso scans at my eye level. Ukyo's gotta be real. She can't be a guy. Can she?  
  
Right now my biological level saying ass, hips, thighs. Tits, eyes. fingernails. Gynecology.  
  
"Something on your mind, sugar?"  
  
Cause and effect: look a girl up and down, what do you think would happen?  
  
"That's quite a stare you got locked on me, Ran-chan."  
  
Is she hitting on me, or preparing to hit me? Ukyo smiles. I am woman; guess my mood. I tell Ukyo that I just had a lot on my mind.  
  
"Me?" She asked  
  
No.  
  
"Then what?"  
  
No, I didn't tell her about the Gynecologist.  
  
No, I didn't tell her about the bread fight I lost.  
  
No, I didn't even bring up Akane's anything.  
  
"You wanna talk about it?"  
  
No.  
  
"Oh, come on Ranma-honey. What could be so bad?"  
  
Does Ukyo have ovaries? I shouldn't ask that. I put down my chopsticks.  
  
Would Ukyo like me to hit her over the head with a piece of bread? That doesn't sound right at all.  
  
I look at her straight in the eyes.  
  
Ukyo, I've found myself in a complicated dilemma that just exploded in my face, plus I've just been defeated and humiliated at martial arts; the only thing I'm really good at; I just really need some time, to think through all this fucking mess that I made and I'm responsible for. No way am I saying that.  
  
"Ranma honey?"  
  
Ukyo it's Just...something...a lot of things...it's very...GRRRRR...you know?  
  
She frowns. Score!  
  
"Sorry to hear about it."  
  
Bullseye! Confusion: Helping men deal with women, since the stone age.  
  
"So you came all the way down here just to sulk?"  
  
I didn't really come all the way down here. Ukyo's restaurant was just on the way, that's all. I think you get where this is going. Ukyo and I are talking, and it's not five minutes into that; She walked in the door.  
  
She's quiet.  
  
I go quiet.  
  
Ukyo goes quiet.  
  
The skillet simmers. It's hot enough to melt fingerprints.  
  
"Planning on staying here all night, Ranma?"  
  
I will not talk to her. I'm staying quiet.  
  
"Well, fine then. Tonight I'm going to shut the main gate at 9:00 and if you're not inside, you can stay outside for all I care."  
  
I am a stone.  
  
"Do you hear me?"  
  
I am a still-life portrait. I am a cliff face. I am a breezeless sunny day. Dammit! Go home, Akane!  
  
I'm a liar.  
  
Get the hell out of here, and go to sleep early. Sweet dreams. I hope you choke on your damn pig.  
  
Her face pulls up tense in anger the way metal must buckle before it wrinkles up into jagged car-crash angles, you can tell that she's gritting her teeth. Extremely pissed, Kodachi looks just like Akane did yesterday, when I told her off. Hell, the black rose can get as angry as she pleases, still, I finally convinced her. Kodachi hands me a piece of bread.  
The only person coming here to train is the pig-tailed girl. Ranma will learn everything she learns. Their styles will be as one. Training me is the same as training Ranma himself, so just relax.  
  
"Ohhhh, I'd like to relax you into unconsciousness, you beast of a woman."  
  
I think there may be a flaw in my plan.  
  
The black widow has at least enough decorum to mate with the male before she eats him, but when two female spiders meet, it's an all out battle with no-holds barred. Black and red. This is going to be Kodachi's purest form of combat, with the single intent of destroying the red haired girl, with bread.  
  
Right now my biological level is saying; let's rock, Epinephrine-releasing splanchnic stimulation of the adrenal medulla, bring it on.  
  
I think I've been watching documentaries too much.  
  
Anyway, I'm in the door, and that much closer to mastering french bread-fuu. Now all I have to worry about is Kuno.  
  
"Oh, brother dear?"  
  
I'll try to abstain from vulgarity.  
  
"I'm going to be giving lessons to a certain red-haired one in the main training hall; please do not disturb us."  
  
I hear an approaching rumble coming down the hall. Think blue thunder.  
  
"Surely you do not mean..." and then he saw my face "Ahhhh! My pig-tailed goddess! To what do I owe this visage of beauty within my own domecile?"  
  
Actually I-  
  
"Speak not, my sweet, for surely I can ascertain, by the truth that all love knows, the truth that joined souls share! I know he one reason for which you have visited the house of Kuno. Is it not to finally profess the anguish of living day by day without your dearest Kuno by thy side? If that be true, then freely, come to me, my sweet. My heart awaits you."  
  
I raise up my bread loaf, and hit it over Kuno's head. The bread breaks, and a purple kind of powder puffs out from the broken bread; bursting around Kuno's face. With a blood-curdling scream, he falls to the floor, completely paralyzed.  
  
Oh, silly me. This is Kodachi I'm dealing with. Just so you're not left in the dark, her plan was to paralyze me.  
  
"Paralyze YOU my dear? Oh, perish the thought. My only desire was to but mildly quell the raging manly force that is Ranma Saotome, into a mode to which a delicate flower such as I may work with more freely."  
  
Delicate flower? Quell? Me?  
  
Sedate rape, that's what it is.  
  
"Anyway, your form is all wrong, dear." She hits me in the stomach with the butt of her loaf of bread. I grasp my gut and bend over from the pain.  
  
"You see my dear? Isn't that much better?"  
  
I knew I was in for it. It's an impending doom feeling, and only the day before this, at Ukyos, I had do deal with it. I couldn't stay out the whole night. I knew I would have to go back to the Tendo's place. I knew I would have to go back to Akane. Only a matter of time. That is impending doom.  
  
I got up and left. It was all very unceremonious, I jammed the rest of my cold okonomiyaki in my mouth, laid my money down, didn't even say goodbye, just waved my hand and walked out.  
  
I'll see you later, Ukyo. I say to nobody.  
  
Akane just had to butt in didn't she? Yes, I was checking out Ukyo, and if I did, then it's my own damn business, isn't it? If Ukyo tried to bleed what happened out of me it's not my fault, not my fault, not my fault because I didn't tell her anything. That's what I'll tell her When I go back.  
  
Stop. Just stop a second.  
  
I stop walking.  
  
What if fate isn't a one-direction thing? What if it's more like a multiple choice thing. God, or whatever you wanna say that controls fate has options lined up for you.  
  
God says: I'll give you this choice, and you get to decide what fate I give you depending on your answer.  
  
You know, more like a cause and effect type of thing.  
  
Are you nodding off?  
  
What if this is the way the world works?  
  
Hit yourself.  
  
Suddenly I realized, every choice I make determaines everything I am.  
  
What if I said I dig the whole innocence thing and vowed to marry Kasumi?  
  
Would she have burned the house down? If I'd have gotten engaged to Nabiki? Would she have taken a vow of poverty? If Akane were a real girl through and through, would we never have met at all? Could we really be that happy?  
  
Can I effect the cause to effect effect?  
  
Yes.  
  
I turn left. If I'd wanted to go home, I would have kept going straight, but I have just realized that I have every right to be pissed off at Akane. I do not have to apologize for jack. I don't have to walk home.  
  
I'm in control of my own fate.  
  
"Ranma." I hear Ryoga say.  
  
I don't have to face Akane but I do have to face Ryoga. My fate still seems to be multiple choice.  
  
For example:  
  
A) Ignore Shampoo B) Chestnut fist C) Change sex D) Go crazy E) all of the above  
  
"If we're going to do this, we're going to do it right"  
  
Sure Kodachi, whatever. I walk into the Kuno Tumbling room. This was a sight to see. Her equipment rack; Serrated-edge ribbon, apparatus nunchucks. If you thought gymnastics was all based upon the grace and beauty of the human form in perfect controlled motion, and had no destructive ulteriors-If you thought that I have two words for you: assault baton. Besides the equipment rack is a big wine rack. She opens it up, and there's no wine. Only an assortment of french bread.  
  
"Judges 7:13" that's written on the top of the rack.  
  
"A round barley bread came tumbling into the Midianite camp." Kodachi says, "It struck the tent with such force that the tent overturned and collapsed."  
  
Must be a metaphor for something.  
  
"It's a metaphor for the whole school and style of french-bread-fuu!"  
  
Yeah, whatever. Like I said, a metaphor! Can we just get to the point? I ask.  
  
"But of course dear." She hands me another loaf to replace the one that crippled Kuno.  
  
"Now let us begin." She holds the bread above her head. Kodachi explained to me that the secret of french-bread-fuu is the user not the bread.  
  
"Yeast for bread, yeast for battle." she said, to which I said wha? These kind of things usually come easy to me.  
  
"strike me." she says "knock me down."  
  
She's doing this wierd jujitsu pirrouette stance, standing on her toes. Not the flats of her toes, the tips. Doing this usually results in your foot turning into a front-end car wreck, but she's holding it prety well. Martial arts music box ballerena says; knock me down if you can, wench.  
  
Nobody calls me wench, especially being a guy in the first place. That hurts. With a smile, I charge and the lesson has begun.  
  
-----------  
  
Notes: Inspiration is down. Classes are up. I still have this story floating around in my head, and I better get it done soon, 'cause I'm getting too old for this stuff. Just picked up the newest Palahniuk book, "Lullaby" which is unsettlelingly supernatural, offbeat from his usual hard edge affront of paradoxical realism. Yet, the book rolled me out of a lull enough to finish this chapter, Here's hoping the next chapter I write will be sooner released, and more gripping.  
  
Picture a bullet in a word, and fire it.  
  
Find a knife in your sentances, and cut them to pieces.  
  
Plant a bomb in your paragraphs, blow them away.  
  
Say the word and silence them all.  
  
Chuck Palahniuk "Lullaby"  
  
Go to sleep, little  
  
More to 


	8. Ranma on the Recent past

Dr. Strangelouvre  
  
Cause 8:  
--------  
  
He's crying on my shoulder, and his mucus dribbles down the front of his face and globs off in big pools into my shirt. He squeezes me so tight, God, I could swear he's gonna crack a vertebra.  
  
"I didn't mean to Ranma, honest to God, man!"  
  
I can remember a time Ryoga was this close up to me he left me a sobbing mess, now the roles are reversed, but it still sucks to be me. I can feel the tears-n-snot soup he's currently secreting running through the fabric of my shirt onto my shoulder.  
  
"Hug me, Ranma. Embrace me! I need that at least."  
  
Embrace this. My fist clenches up, my hand goes in the air, and then serenity. Tranquility takes me over. Noitaru just stabbed in the back of the shoulder.  
  
"Seratonin point! B.F. Skinner School special attack. How did that make you feel?"  
  
My hand goes limp, drops down and my brain is at ease. The psychiatric approach to problem solving is usually to dope someone up with drugs. In this case Noitaru is using his brain-fucking martial-arts to keep me in a state of lulled bliss, using my own endorphins against me. Cause and effect. My vision has blurred, I'm high as a kite, and no matter how much the logical part of my brain wants to be mad the constant supply of neronal happy-sauce just won't let me.  
  
This all started a week ago. In fact, it's been a long time so I can't help but give the gory details for this most recent week in my history. It all started when I changed the fate of my entire life by not going home. The turn I took, well it brought me face to face with Ryoga.  
  
"We have to talk Ranma."  
  
Like hell we do. This idiot tried to rape my girl half. My next move was going to be to bash the bridge of his nose into his forehead, but something happened that made me stop. A cloth was pushed over my face and some kind of chemical was squeezed out over my mouth. One wiff was like someone poking my brain with wooden dowels through my nose.  
  
Cause and effect. Hit me with ether and I'm out like a light.  
  
Next thing I know I'm coming around mumbling no problem. No problem. It's OK. There is this gigantic grayish blob trying to suck me inside of its body cavity like something out of a microscope slide.  
  
The grayish blob crushes my torso, and I can see yellow and black bits of gunk floating around inside of it. It speaks to me in a mumbled tone, like someone stuck wax then cotton then more wax in my ear.  
  
"Forgive, me Ranma. I don't hate you but I must become a man."  
  
The gray mass sucks me in and crushes my body some more squeezing my ribs and gusts together like an accordion.  
  
No, Mr. Amoeba-thing. Don't eat me.  
  
I blink again and the image gets a little clearer. Upon reflection this is entirely embarrassing. I blink and shake my head. Now everything becomes clear. Ryoga is the microbe trying to suck me in, and Noitaru is at his side, tapping my shoulder, back, face, just about anywhere that he can get my brain to numb itself into submission.  
  
"He's awake, now Ryoga, really let it out."  
  
"Ranma?" He grabs my head, and drags it down so we're looking face to face. His smile goes from ear to ear, with his jagged fangs jutting out like stalagmites of elation and his eyes shrink-wrapped in tears.  
  
All my senses seem to be coming back to me in a Testing, testing one-two-three kind of way. The imaginary blocks in my ears, and over my eyes are completely gone. My conscious mind is ussured back into reality, and into my enemies loving arms. How do you feel?  
  
I feel great.  
  
Joy.  
  
Rapture.  
  
Bliss.  
  
How should I feel?  
  
Rage.  
  
Kill.  
  
Destroy.  
  
Ryoga must die.  
  
The problem with the brain is that it's something physically real. If you poke it in a certain place, or squirt it with some kind of drug you can change everything.  
  
Can't eat tofu?  
  
Poke.  
  
Now you can.  
  
Can't write a poem?  
  
Squirt.  
  
Now you can.  
  
Don't like Ryoga?  
  
Poke. Poke. Poke. Poke. Poke.  
  
Repeat.  
  
Anyway the whole session went on like that. My-drugged up head couldn't muster enough anger to kick the shit out of the kid, so one might argue that we actually made headway. That was Thursday last. Eventually we all got situated, and I agreed to do this little meeting thing once a day for a little while. That should at least help the poor bastard level his surging emotions enough to keep us from killing each other.  
  
The daily one one-on-ones actually get pretty interesting. We do Alexandrean yoga, and Hibikis hums are like jagged sheet-metal scraped across a blackboard. The last four times this hasn't been much of a bother, since I was too busy feeling the lower half of my body go numb.  
  
We do trust exercises. Standing up we hold hands and lean back as far as we can. If we let go-well I'll just cut to the chase, we always let go. Thump. Cause and effect, flat on our backs. It's called gravity.  
  
Sunday was interesting. Noitaru had us doused and we had to explore the virtues of our respective cursed forms. We sat there, I as the busty bombshell redhead I never wanted to be and Ryoga the pig on a mat in the park staring at each other. This went on for a long time. Joggers would pass by, then they would return, and there we were; chick, pig and shrink all sitting about, staring at one another. It couldn't last forever so I finally said that Ryoga the pig is not as obnoxious as Ryoga the human.  
  
"Very good Ranma." Noitaru said. "Ryoga?"  
  
The little black pig motioned with his front hoof at Noitaru. The shrink complied by laying out an ink well, and a sheet of paper on the ground. The pig dipped his snout into the ink and traced out lines on the paper. When he was all done, Mr. P. dipped his hoof into the ink, and stamped it out on the bottom corner.  
  
Noitaru handed me the paper.  
  
"I'm glad to see you've both made such great headway in this short period of time. We'll meet again here, at the same time."  
  
I stood up smiling, looking at the paper. Teeth clenched tight enough to crunch gravel. I turned and walked away.  
  
"When Ranma is a girl, he is very cute." Then the little black hoof-print.  
  
You'd look cute over diced pineapple, frikker. Anyway, I couldn't worry about that. I had to get over to Kuno's house. YES, I'm still being trained to learn French bread-fuu, and YES, Kodachi is still teaching me. I'm not ready to give up until I do some serious damage to Strangelouvre. That pussy-prodding hack is all mine. What better way for him to be defeated than by the person with the heart of a man, and occasionally the body of a woman? This situation doesn't smell of irony, it bleeds.  
  
Anyway it was Sunday, the same day that I got P-suke's little love letter That I arrive for training and Kodachi leads me into the den, and stands over the phone.  
  
"Well, my dear, someone has to challenge Dr. Strangelouvre, and it might as well be you. Simply call him, and it will be challenge enough. Formal letters are completely useless on the good doctor."  
  
I assumed I should just tell him Ranma Saotome wants a rematch, right?  
  
"Precisely my dear."  
  
So I made the call.  
  
"Dr. Strangelouvre, gynecological clinic, Rei speaking. May I help you?"  
  
I need to speak to Dr. Strangelouvre please.  
  
"May I ask who is calling."  
  
I adjusted my voice. I'm Akane Tendo.  
  
That was by far the worst impression, ever.  
  
"I beg your pardon?"  
  
Right now my biological level is saying: Look at me I'm a girl with testicles, I'm a bad impression, someone stop me.  
  
I muttered well, that is I uh-before Kodachi grabbed the phone out of my hand.  
  
"Kodachi Kuno wishes to speak with him."  
  
She handed the phone back to me.  
  
"Why darling Ranma keeps an annoying girl like you around I'll never understand."  
  
I got ready to snap my fingers. I said if Ranma could be rid of me, he would do it just like, and I snapped, that.  
  
"Another thing he and I have in common."  
  
I go back to the phone. I'm on hold.  
  
Billie Jean is not my lover. She's just a girl who claim-  
  
"Mon amour pour vous brûle comme le soleil au-dessus de la mer.  
  
Mon amour pour vous lames au-dessus et au delà de moi comme des nuages d'orage.  
  
Mon amour pour vous, deviendra-t-ce une tempête pour nous consommer deux?"  
  
What the fuck?  
  
"Who ees thees?"  
  
I'm just calling to tell you that I want a rematch.  
  
"AI Baig youar pardaun Madame, I deu naut fait my paishenns."  
  
Of course not. Ranma Saotome had me call you to tell you he wants a rematch.  
  
"Ze gutlais swien, he couuld naut tawk to moi himesailf?"  
  
Look, If Strangelouvre wants Ranma to call him that can be arranged. However, he thinks this should be sufficient. Will you agree to fight?  
  
"Naut unlaiss it ees made moar eenteresteeng. Eef he vaus to never use martial arts again if he loses, zen I wuuld be veary anxiuus."  
  
And if Ranma wins?  
  
"Zen I weel nevair aggan bozer ze madame Kodachi. He cain haer aal to heemsailf."  
  
My gut clenched. At that moment I realized what this was all about. Oh, God.  
  
Deal, I say. Consider it done.  
  
"In woan week at zee park, neun. Oui?"  
  
Oui. He'll be there  
  
"Nau, eef yule escuse moi, zere is a 37-year oald in coald stiirups I maust attend teau."  
  
My spine shivered and I hung up the phone. How could anyone not want to beat the crap out of this guy? I turned to Kodachi and told her that if Ranma beats him, Strangelouvre will be gone for good.  
  
"Well, you're useful for something dear. What else do you do besides running errands for dearest Ranma?"  
  
I grabbed her by the collar and brought her face right up to mine. I kick ass.  
  
"Really, dear?" Then she laughed. "Well, let's see, shall we?"  
  
I'm a lot better at French bread-fuu than I used to be, now. The essence is in the chi. The battle aura that you produce can be extended into the object you hold. If you can do it right, then the object you hold can be defended by your own aura. It's not extremely effective, so combined with aura projection you have to learn to focus it as well as use different hand motions to attack with studier parts of the bread. I know it sounds crazy, but trust me, it works.  
  
For the whole week I busted ass to get the tricks of the trade down, and it's paying off.  
  
Thursday, the day that Ryoga wept a slime-hole into my shirt, Kodachi and I did battle She came at me with a full-thrust, fencer style. I blocked that with a side-swipe from the but of the bread. Still in swordsman mode, the girl swipes at my head. A quick duck, and I try to slam the bread home on her heel, she has to back flip to avoid me.  
  
"Not bad, Red."  
  
I nod.  
  
"Now we need to discuss a problem."  
  
Problem? I shouted, that was a perfect attack.  
  
"No no no, dear. The problem is with Ranma. You tell me he is learning and I just trust you? No. Tomorrow I will not let you into my house, understand? I want to see what Ranma has learned. So only he can come here. Understood?"  
  
I told her that he'd only could come if there are no dirty tricks. No paralysis powder, gymnastic weapons, strikes from brothers, no attacking sharks or alligators. He'll come here, and Kodachi will spar with him just like she sparred with me. Agreed?  
  
"Indubitably, my dear."  
  
So I agreed. It was Thursday then. The next day would change my life.  
  
Oh yeah, Akane.  
  
I haven't spoken much to Akane in the last week. What's there to say? She was a lie to me from the start. What she really is is something I couldn't want any less. But for your sake I'll tell you that every time I went out to meet with Ryoga, then spar with Kodachi she always had some word for me, she waited for me out by the gate each time. Before I left on Thursday she said to me:  
  
"Ranma, I really want to have a talk with you. Allot has changed too fast. So please, when you come home, Just be with me for a little while, and hear me out."  
  
Sounds nice doesn't it? Rewind to Wednesday when she said this:  
  
"Ranma, we should talk."  
  
Rewind to Tuesday:  
  
"Talk to me later, Ranma."  
  
Back to Monday:  
  
"See you later Ranma."  
  
Sunday:  
  
"You leaving?"  
  
Saturday:  
  
"Get lost, Jerk."  
  
Friday:  
  
"You had better have something to say to me, you ass."  
  
Now, let's look all the way back to Thursday, the day on which, just as she promised, she locked the gate, and I had to find someplace else to go.  
  
Authors notes:  
  
OK, no more school, which kept me from writing, but at the same time, I'm pretty sure everyone who once followed the fic is out of the loop on it now. I don't think anybody really cares if this gets written or not, nobody except me, so I guess I better finish it. I love to win a "most bizzare fic" award, so if there are any out there, somebody make sure I get nominated.  
  
The real inspiration for polishing this off was when I went to see "The Matrix: Reloaded" and for a brief moment on screen, before me was an arrogant, French dingus going on about "Cause and effect." All I can say is that it was a thing that made me go Hmmm. 2 seconds later I knew I had to write more Strangelouvre. Whether a coincidence, message from God or indication that the Wachowski bros. like my work (HAHAHAHAHA, right) I knew I had to write more.  
  
Further notes: For the hell of it I added direct quotes from "Fight Club" and "Survivor" Both books are © Chuck Palahniuk, and don't fuck with him, he'll kick your ass.  
  
"Billie Jean" is a Michael Jackson song. I don't know who owns the rights, I don't own them that's for sure. I just used it as an excerpt, please don't sue me. Don't show this to him, or he'll climb up a tree, and sue me while claiming he never saw a plastic surgeon.  
  
Ranma ½ is owned by Rumiko Takahashi. Don't show this to her, or she'll have a heart attack, or try to have me killed or 


	9. Ranma on dejection, embracement

Dr. Strangelouvre  
  
Cause: 9 --------  
  
If you're nodding off, hit yourself.  
  
This is important.  
  
She said, "Know me and know that you know me."  
  
Everything about Akane makes sense after you aknowledge the fact that she has huevos. She is Akane, hear her roar. She hates guys, why? Because only a part of her is a guy, not that she is supposed to be that way, and not that she isn't either. She hates being girly why? Because the rest of her is a girl that has to deal with it. Not that she is supposed to be that way, and not that it isn't either. She hates me, why? Because, and face the facts, we're too much alike. A guy with a girl half, and a girl with a guy half, my yin for yang, her day for night. Its something like a puzzle that if you look at it and press it a little the two pieces might fit together, but they can't.  
  
If you try to force two puzzle pieces together, you'll ruin them and whatever picture they were trying to make.  
  
That's a metaphor for something completely different.  
  
I won't generalize with metaphors because it's too simple. I don't want Akane.  
  
Akane doesn't want me.  
  
We hate eachother and that's the way it has always been. It's nothing personal, it's nothing grudgeworthy, it's our nature. Physical makeup. Biological level. The situation has nothing to ask for, and nothing to be done about it. Cause and Effect. We are who we are. Incompatable. So why? For the love of God, why? Why does she think we need to talk?  
  
It was friday. I wake up, and it's friday. One weekend from now, I'll be fighting Strangelouvre. I wake up and it's time to train.  
  
If I never see another Baguette for ten years, it'll be too soon.  
  
I wake up and I'm training. This is what I do, this is my way of life. I practice kempo, and I'll be dammed if Strangelouvre takes it all away from me. The bread is thrust foward, and the force of my Chi bashes it against the training post. The sun beams in from the east, through the trees and I couldn't feel better. The training post, which is just a thick dowel wrapped in rope bends over like a noodle with the force of my blows. Around me, things are coming to life. I can smell Miso soup coming from the kitchen, the goldfish start to stir the water looking for some morning food, and a big fat-ass panda bear walks out and plops down on the porch, to get a look at the sunrise.  
  
I break fast, to get breakfast. That morning was a little more quiet than usual. Through my water glass, and over the rim of my miso cup, I could see Akane. Glancing. Glimpsing. Checking. The whole fucking meal, she couldn't take her eyes off me. I go back to training, and she's in the window. Eyeing. Staring. Seeing. Today, she just seems to want to look me up and down as I ignore the hell out of her.  
  
Feel the bread.  
  
Be the bread.  
  
Thrust your will forth to defeat your foes.  
  
Yeast and Salt and Light strike!  
  
From breakfast to lunch, She moved all over the house, and in the yard. Peeking. Peering. Observing. Meanwhile I actually feel like I'm getting somewhere with this. The thing about Gynecologists is that they think they can have everything they want. After you've trained any women to do whatever you tell them to do, just because a school gave you a piece of paper, they must get this superiority complex. Think lion tamer. Think talk show host. Think dickhead.  
  
Really, how do you think the lion feels? One minute he's clawing and ripping the spleen out of a 700 pound zebra, the next, he's standing on a podium in a top hat, playng a kazoo. Me going against Strangelouve again, I'm totally like the once tamed lion who says 'Up yours, ringmaster, I've had enough. Rowr!' This is really why I don't want to talk to Akane. She's going to try to talk me out of it. She did the same thing last time.  
  
She never even wanted me to go to the Doctor's office.  
  
Well you know what, I never even wanted to go. None of this was supposed to happen. I was supposed to find out about Akane after out parents had forced us to tie the knot. it was supposed to happen when there was nothing I could do about it. Love conqures all.  
  
What happened recently didn't happen for better or worse. How could we ever be together? Even if we had no curses over our head? Now wejust have a new reason to get mad at eachother. What happened recently changed nothing.  
  
Noticing. Spying. Peeping.  
  
Why the hell should we talk at all? I get some lunch, and she pokes me. I'm sopping up my Kitsune Udon, and she yanks my shirt. I set my empty bowl down, drink my juice. Stand up, and then right after I said it was a good meal, she looks up. Focusing. Eyeballing. Ogling. And she says; "Hey."  
  
My eyes dart to the lower corner of their sockets, my head swivels to her direction, and quite loudly I aske her; what?  
  
"You don't have to shout. I was just hoping we could talk later."  
  
I look around the table, no one is looking at us. I know they can't really block this out, but they're trying all the same. Akane and I, the invisible man/boy/girl/whatever. They can try all they want. This isn't going away. I look back down at Akane, putting on her best puppy dog eyes and I say sure.  
  
Sure, I say. Fine. I say OK. Great. Yeah. My pleasure.  
  
As I beat the bread into the dummy inside the dojo I say. I'd love to. I swing the bread into the board. Wonderful. I grab the bread at both ends, and strike the wall with the flat of the bread. I'd love to. There was an odd aroma in the air, that I couldn't put my finger on, but never the less wasn't too pleased with, so I hi-tailed inside the Dojo, and I'd been practicing since lunch. All I can think about is her, and that damn innocence she still thinks she can tote around like a handgun. Good for emergencies.  
  
You don't have to shout.  
  
Yes I do. I do, and I've fucking earned it. I don't know how much more of this I'm supposed to take. I do know that I had my fill of this a week ago and if I feel like shouting, tough deal. I am Ranma hear me roar. Rowr!  
  
It's almost dinner. I've skipped my little therapy session or whatever you want to call it with Ryoga and Noitaru in order to hone my skills for my demonstration tonite. Has he learned, Kodachi? Oh, yeah, and then some. First I'll demonstrate skills worthy to defeat Strangelouvre. Then I'll tell her, that she has to know that I am not doing it for her. She can get that out of her head. I'm doing this for me. I'm no hero, I'm Friedrich Nietzsche meets Dirty Harry. An anti-hero in this for his own gains.  
  
Don't bother cheering me on, I'm not doing this for you.  
  
It was almost dinner, so I step inside, and wash the sweat off of me. For a while, I wash all my troubles away. I come down to eat, and everyone's already started. I'm invisible again, but at least there's a full meal ready for me. It looks like there's someone already there. Everyones all settled in, and relaxed. The TV is on, no-one looks back. It's like there's a ghost down there in my spot, getting my dinner. Akane is the only one not watching TV, she's glaze-eyed intent at nothing on her full plate, then as if on cue she looks up at me.  
  
Scrutinizing. Surveying. Spotting.  
  
"Hi Ranma. I waited for you."  
  
Oh my God.  
  
What happened to me?  
  
Two weeks ago I was just fine; at peace with earth. Now I'm invisible to everyone but Akane, who can't stop looking, looking, looking. This all started today. What's going on?  
  
"Nothing." she said. "dinner is served if you want it."  
  
I sit down, and I take in my nourishments. As is now known by all, she wanted to talk with me. I'm done with training, so now would be the best time.  
  
"Not now." she said. "Later."  
  
Look, I have an appointment to make, so please don't waste my time. She should just spit it out.  
  
Her eyes stared back at me, unblinking.  
  
"Trust me." she gestured to my food "Eat."  
  
So I ate. She ate. No words, just eating. Invisible and alone, together. Envious? Don't be.  
  
Long story short, we get done, and the sun is setting. Akane turns to me.  
  
"You ready?"  
  
Sure, why not? I say. She takes me by the hand, and now we're walking to the stairs, but just before I get out of the room I look back to see a shot of a commercial on TV.  
  
Looking. Looking. Looking. Looking. Looking. Looking. Looking. Looking. Looking.  
  
Everyone was looking back at me. Kasumi, Nabiki, Pop, Mr. Tendou, Happousai. Poof! I'm back in reality. I'm visible, more than that, I'm unignorable. I'm the center of attention. Suddenly I'm like a car-crash in a shopping plaza that you can take your eyes off of. The worst part is I don't know why, and I still don't as she drags me around the corner. Out of everyone's view. There is a reason for all of this, and it is presently dragging and pulling me upstairs.  
  
We're at her door, with the little yellow "Akane" duck on it. What's going on here?  
  
"We need to talk." The door is opened. I turn to go back downstairs, out the door, and the hell away from here. She pulls my arm.  
  
"Don't walk away from me."  
  
I spin on my heels, and for a moment, I bring my open palm around to slap Akane right across the face. I stop suddenly, and abruptly I slap the rim of the door instead.  
  
What if I don't feel like talking? Now she's crying. Great. Her teary eyes look back at me and she reaches her hand over to first touch my face, then to tug my ponytail, slightly.  
  
"Then please..." she said "Just....Listen."  
  
I don't want to hear anything. I want to go. That's exactly what I am going to do. So Akane, let go of my arm. She looked down, and as soon as she let go, brought her hand up to dry her tears. When I turned to leave, that's when I hear it.  
  
Know me, and know that you know me.  
  
Did I want to? After all this is that what I could possibly want? I didn't know. One thing was for sure. Cause and Effect. It's the way the world works. It makes me curious. She had talked me into it. Afteral, with all that had gone under the bridge, knowing a little more might help.  
  
I was then inside. The door is shut. The lights are off. The sun is setting. All around the room are the ghostly shades of twilight, the reds and blues, magenta that coallece and make the murky colors of twilight. I'm in her room, and I'm on her bed, looking at her on the floor, red shines in from the window and onto her hair, and her face is a pale blue.  
  
"Ranma" She said "Just what am I to you?"  
  
What do you mean? I ask, You waiting for me to say I fucking love you or something?  
  
"Not like that. That's not it at all."  
  
So what then? She took in a deep breath.  
  
"Fuck us. This has nothing to do with us. This is about me, OK? I need to know if I am a woman."  
  
Cause and effect. She just blew my mind out the door. What is that supposed to mean?  
  
"I know that you can become a girl. It's who you are. But you're no girl. To me, the Ranma that I know he is a he. He is right before me, and how the outside changes doesn't effect what's inside at all. No matter what form you take; to me you'll always be the same bull-headed, perverted idiot."  
  
I roll my eyes. Yeah, thanks.  
  
"That means, something don't you see? I know you, and I know I know you." I look back at her "Like it or not Ranma, you know me too. At this point it's safe to say you know everything about me. What am I?"  
  
There is no way out. I'm doomed. She's Akane and that's all that can be said.  
  
"That's not enough." She breathed in deep. "I've needed surgory, I've had to read every last letter of diagnosis, I have to meet with Dr. Strangelouvre, I can never have children, I'll never be cured, what am I? I'm a woman de-throned. What I need to know now, the only thing I want to know is this."  
  
And she stopped. I think I can smell smoke. This whole house will burn down.  
  
"A man has to tell me. He doesn't have to be in love with me or whatever shit you think I'm looking for. I need to know only that it's possible. A man can love me if I'm a woman. You're the first man outside of our circle to know, Ranma, so you have to tell me. You have to tell me Ranma. Am I a woman?"  
  
I stand up. What you are is a headcase, Akane, I'm out of here. As soon as I got up to go out the door she jumped up and slammed me against it. The next thing I know, I'm turned around, and she's looking me square in the eyes, and she's shivvering.  
  
"Answer me, or I'll never forgive you."  
  
I was going to say: Are you sure you'd like my answer. Are you su-  
  
And she kissed me. I still don't know why, but I went with it. All I can remember now is the sound of both our breaths heaving in and out of our nostrils, smelling the thick scent of spontinaity.  
  
I'm on the bed, and she's above me. She throws her vest off her shoulders, and throws it aside. gestring to the buttons on her blouse she says,  
  
"Can you get these for me?"  
  
With a smirk I say that I've already seen them.  
  
"Seen" she said, and took my right hand "but never touched" Bam. She put me on second base. I started work, and lickety split, she was in her bra in the fading light. Mind you I know what breasts feel like, I of all people should, but at this particualr instance it felt like discovering fireworks for the first time. Cause and Effect. Sure. But I still don't know what came over me.  
  
She bent over and we started making out all over again. Pretty soon, there she was naked, and right by my side, with her curved being traced by my fingers. She's still shivvering.  
  
"Maybe I'm cold." she sighed, and brought herself closer to me. "Hold me for a 


	10. Ranma on sex

Cause: 10 ---------  
  
Envious?  
  
The thing I wonder about sex is, can you ever get it just right? I thought she was going too fast for me, So I told her to slow down a little. The machinegun bump and grind came to a stop, and now it's too slow. Not that slow, I say. Now she's going too fast again. I didn't bother opening my mouth again, for fear that there was no way that even I could think of the correct pace. If you get laid, can it be done just right? I look back and I know I can do better than that.  
  
Next time I get some, I want it to be so perfectly syncronized, that I look back and think job well done, think medalworthy, think spot-on aricraft carrier landing. Right now, all I can think of is clumsy, spontanious act of passion, and no other classsification will do. How was I to know that all this would turn out with me looking down and seeing the length and girth of my manhood enveloped by feminine folds? She's above me, rides like on horsback, moans in extacy, and I'm content to grab her ass as she does her thing. Up and down, giddiyap, let's go.  
  
Together.  
  
Apart.  
  
Together.  
  
Apart.  
  
Sex is the only thing that hasn't changed in a billion years, but isn't boring yet. What makes this fact worse is that sex just the same fucking thing over and over and over and over again. Up. down. In. Out. Together. Apart. Persistant, redundant, but never dull. Or at least not when you lean up, and slather your tounge across a suple, round breast and tufted nipple. The long moans becoming punctuated 'Ooo-ooo-ooo's, between the lips of a mouth that can't close quick enough for the next barrage of pleasure. My hand reaches to her back, and I can run my hand across her soft skin and slick, hot sweat. All this is being expressed in the worlds most primal poety consisting of but a few bittersweet words.  
  
"Oh, Fuck! Nooooo...Oooooo. Oh God, Yes."  
  
I'm embellishing this too much, I'll move on. Jump back to before all this.  
  
Suffice to say, it is all her faut. Akane, that is. That's how I wanted to look at it at the time, at least. After a few minutes together, now she's naked, and I'm strutting my boxers. Our smooth skins are the color of the diminished sun, and glowing moon. I stroked my hands through her short hair, and put one of my legs over hers. From top to bottom I could feel all of her goosebumps melt away into smooth feminine skin that gave a pale glow, as soft on the eyes as it was to the touch. I was not ready right then to do the deed with Akane, but it was all I could think about.  
  
Right now my biological level is like wait for it. GO! No, give it just a moment. Hold. Now! Stop!  
  
What am I doing?  
  
How did it come to this?  
  
This is it.  
  
There's no turning back.  
  
I just want my life to be normal, honest to holy heaven, I don't want the curse or the fiances, or the trouble, what I want is something normal, and this; sitting here quiet, next to Akane, this is the closest I have come in a long while. Peace and normality  
  
Give me normality.  
  
I hope normality is a word.  
  
The fact that I was right there, that there was no way out of what I had done was coursing through my mind as I walked down the road in the night. After my little debauchery with Akane I still had one thing to do that night. demostrate that I knew French-bread fuu. I get to the Kuno residence and all I can think about it Akane. Swirling in my mind are images of her hair, her eyes, her face. It's what's on my mind when I get to the Kuno gate, and there on the ground, bagguete bread and letter. It's a tiny fold-in-half card like the kind you see reserving a seat for people at expensive dinners. I pick it up, expecting to see my name, but in the street light all I saw was an embroidered black rose. I flip it open to read what's inside.  
  
Danger.  
  
She's got my head now, and she's propping herself above me. Akane lifts herself and dangles her girls over my face, before pressing them down on me with one on each side.  
  
"Why don't you use that mouth of yours for something useful, Ranma?"  
  
Mmmfffmfmmmmfmmffmmf.  
  
With a womans breasts on both sides of you face, and your mouth stuck dead center on her cleavage you speak only in Ms and Fs. Hence the term muffled. There's documented cases of men being suffocated in this position, because "Get off me I can't fucking breathe" comes out "mfffmmfmmffmfffmmmfmmfffmfm." That and it wastes precious air.  
  
"What did you say, Ranma?"  
  
Mmmfffmfmmfm-tits kissed? The bitch lifted off me right as I said it. How embarassing. She smiles.  
  
"Feel free, Pervert."  
  
Whatever.  
  
I go to work. Kodachi drops in on me from above. I Jump backwards half-flip and handspring up. She's now in the light of the street-lamp, holding a long loaf and she's all dolled up shinobi style. Black-on-black-on-black. Her face is wrapped in a cloth so that only her purple-grey eyes peirce into the night, and her ponytail is bunched up on the side of her head, with little cloth petals poking out of it so it looks like a blooming black flower.  
  
"Forget something darling?" She holds up the bread loaf. My bread. I thought we had an agreement. No dirty tricks. She tosses the loaf to me, as soon as it's in my hands, she charges and tries to slap a fast one across my head. My bread is up, my chi is extended, and BAM the two loaves collide with enough force to topple ten tents. She looks me square in the eye.  
  
"The situation has changed, Ranma dear."  
  
She doesn't know the half of it. I'm fighting Kodachi and all I can think about is Akane running her fingers through my hair as I gave her tits the ice-cream cone treatment.  
  
"Lived my whole life as a girl, Ranma. Not just bits and pieces as a girl, the whole thing."  
  
I stop swirling my tounge around her nipple, look up and tell her tomboy. She lived her life as a tomboy.  
  
She said she didn't. Well, not all the time, anyway she said. There were the morning battles for her hand in relationships, and she defeated all of them, for their own good as much as hers. There was the Kuno problem, which had nothing to do with any physiological complications, it is all much simpler than that.  
  
You know.  
  
He's an Asshole. Simple.  
  
There was the kendo, which just came naturally to her. After learning the truth about herself oh-so long ago, it was good to have an outlet for the frustration of being a girl and wondering why. Without her mother there to guide and tell her everything is alright in the end, she might have gone a little...  
  
Ballistic?  
  
She stops stroking my hair, and light-fists my forehead.  
  
"Fuck you."  
  
See what I mean?  
  
She grabs me and rolls over on the bed.  
  
How do you feel?  
  
Now I'm on top. She nestles into the bed and props her chest up.  
  
"Get back to work."  
  
I take a swing at her, and she jumps up into the air. Now Kodachi's on the leaning tiled roof of the gate. The moonlight that was, moments ago, shining over and into Akanes belly-button and reflected in her glossy-black hair is now high above Kodachi. Her eys squint.  
  
"Ranma, Dr. Strangelouvre knows."  
  
At that moment I couldn't care less, I wanted to fight and get out of there. All I could think about was how I was going to explain to Akane.  
  
I wasn't thinking straight.  
  
I just did what I felt was natural.  
  
I'm sorry I did it without thinking about the consequences. Our fathers, the dojo, the whole fiance thing we've put up with for so long.  
  
It's not too late.  
  
Let's try to start over.  
  
"He knows that I taught you French Bread-fuu and he is most irate."  
  
I haven't said anything to Kodachi, and I don't plan to. I jump into the air and come down with a hard swing of the bread. She jumps back and the bread comes down and cracks right through a ceramic tile.  
  
She shifts her weight to one side and brings her hands up. Swiftly she reaches out and slides her palms under my boxers.  
  
Hello!  
  
"I always thought you had a cute butt, Ranma."  
  
Oh, gag me.  
  
"Feels nice too."  
  
All this time Akane's been looking at my butt.  
  
Joy. Rapture. Bliss.  
  
"Ranma, you know that..."  
  
And she pauses.  
  
"When I meet the man that I'll love-whoever he may be, I just want him to think of me as a woman. That's simple enough isn't it?"  
  
I stop what I'm doing and look up at her.  
  
"I'm just wondering, Ranma. What do you think about me? hmmm?"  
  
Hmmm.  
  
Akane's un-cute most of the time. She doesn't hold a candle to me in my girl-form. She's got thighs that harken to pick-up truck suspension.  
  
Industrial-strength hips.  
  
"Come on Ranma. Answer me."  
  
No way am I answering this question. I dry off her breasts with my fingers.  
  
Akane looks like a girl at least. It's entirely convincing. You look at her, and you can't help but insist that she is a girl. A model of womanhood. Sure, she may not have all the materials inside, but afterall, it's not what's inside, but what's outside that counts. From the outside, I haven't got any major complaints. She looks like a woman to me. I move my fingers over to where I can feel her heart beating. Feels like one too.  
  
She smiles, then takes a swing at me. The french bread zings right over my head. My ducking gave her an opening and Kodachi lunged forward with a kick. I used my bread to block it, and she hopped backwards off it, and landed. So easy. So spry. Oh, Akane.  
  
"He knows I taught your aquaintance, and that you now know french-bread-fuu. He thus insisted that I was a treatcharous flirt."  
  
I nod. I'm not talking to her, and besides, that's comment is something I'd nod to anyway.  
  
"In response I told him that he was a dirty-sportsman who only defeats those with one silly, obscure martial-art. I told him I prepaired you for a fair fight. Though I would have rather done so in person, Ranma darling."  
  
I smirk. She still doesn't get it. She never will.  
  
"Dr. Strangelouvre still could not be satisfied, Ranma darling. He demmanded some kind of pennance or some such for my having betrayed him, or some such. What an utter ass."  
  
She points the bread at me, looking straight down it, at me.  
  
"He said 'If I defeat Ranma, Kodachi, I want your hand in marriage."  
  
I was shocked. A moment later I felt ill. Even for Kodachi's sake.  
  
Married to a gynecologist?  
  
Could you imagine that? How could you wish him a good day at the office? How could you ask him how his day went when he got home?  
  
Total submission. The worlds most powerful kind of doctor. It's the only proffession where womanizing can be backed up with a doctorate degree. After getting any woman to do anything he tells them, then he would come home and you get to hear about it.  
  
Honey, you wouldn't believe the pussy I saw today!  
  
Married to Strangelouvre?  
  
Not that, not even for Kodachi. No woman deserves that.  
  
"I agreed, Ranma dear. Now You have no choice but to best him. Do you understand. You either best him or you sentance me to submission under that twisted forigner.  
  
I almost said something, but she yelled at me to be quiet.  
  
"I need your total concentration now, Ranma dear. This isn't the time for word. It is a time for action. Prove to me you can defeat him."  
  
She jumped off the roof, and her legs had the same pale color as Akanes. She bounded off the front lawn and into the house. I followed her and jumpedright on to the landing, where the door was slightly ajar.  
  
I placed my fingers at the opening and pushed them inside a little. Akane's breath started to get heavyer and faster.  
  
I think I know how she's feeling.  
  
Take that any way you want.  
  
Suffice to say I know what it should feel like if you use the right moves. Lord knows perverts the world over would love to see my mental notes on female pleasure centers.  
  
This could have been such a perfect moment. This is the moment before the act. Me and she. My gentle working hand and her soft, accepting opening. I started to remark. She was right all along. I became convinced. She had to be a woman. It was the only answer. I looked at her breasts. They're a womans breasts. Her belly, that's a womans belly. What I had my hands on, and this is speaking from prior knowledge, this is 100 womanhood, right?  
  
She put her right hand over mine, and brought the other to my hair. She stroked her fingers into my hair, and onto my ear, and in a soft voice, between the slight panting of pleasure, and under tearing eyes she looked deeply into me and said;  
  
"Well, sort of."  
  
Kodachi had bolted down the hall. Now what?  
  
The Kuno estate is a huge labaryinth of halls, dens, and specialized rooms. Training halls, kitchens, and the most obvious place to find Kodachi, the gymnasium. That's where I guessed she would be. I slowly make my way into the corridor, well lit by ovehead lighting. These are the kind of lights that are so bright and white they'll burn a flashing blue spot into your vision if you stare at them long enough.  
  
Akane.  
  
I'm not looking at her anymore, but I can still see her. She's crying, looking so godammed cute, and trying to calm me down. Her ams around me and her warm, suple body hanging onto me, hanging over me. Fresh and pressed. Warm and crying and cute, oh fuck.  
  
It's all an unignorable blue burn etched in my memory. A moment I can't force myself to forget, and I'm supposed to be focused on combat.  
  
I'm in the gymnasium, and it's empty. The lights are on, and the equipment is ready for use but no Kodachi. Where is she? Can she even hear me?  
  
"I can hear you darling."  
  
Her voice comes from an open door on the other side of the Gym. As I make my way over there, the air becomes warmer, and muggier.  
  
I'm headed into some kind of heat.  
  
"Your weakness is water, darling."  
  
I stop. She knows. Is it even possible? I don't know whether I should be scared or relieved.  
  
"Water is the enemy that nullifies frech-bread fuu technique."  
  
False alarm. I walk back into the heat. Clouds of steam start to condence on my shirt.  
  
"You can only ask a grain to support so much stress after it has been contaminated by moisture. This is the final test that will prove that you have mastered french-bread fuu."  
  
Her voice eccoes down this corridor, and I am locked on to it, bread in hand. I can already feel it start to absorb the surrounding steam.  
  
Pretty soon, I'm in a huge room with a gigantic steaming pool set before me. There in the middle of it is a woman's sillouhette. It's not curved, but straight like Kodachi is wearing a bathing towel, but it's definately her as she holds the bread above her head.  
  
"The bread won't last more than a minute in this steam, darling. I suggest you act quickly."  
  
She's following me. I've left her room. My pant are on, and I've got my shirt. I am leaving, and good God, Akane is following me. She's yelling at me, she's one pace behind, and she is not wearing a thing. We walk by Kasumi.  
  
"Ranma! Stop, Goddammit! So what if I had surgery, I didn't have a choice!"  
  
This is how I learned what really happened to Akane. We walk by Nabiki. You see, when you have Androgen Insesitivity syndrome (AIS, AKA TFM), you don't get a uterus, and there's this big slab of tissue where your vaginia should be. We walk by Happosai, who's too terrified of the goings on to even do a single perverted thing. We walk by Ryoga, the pig.  
  
"Don't walk away from me like you can just throw all this away, you fucking jerk."  
  
It's not her fault that she developed testis as an embryo, but suddenly, BAM, it's my problem, and my problem is Strangelouvre. Because she had to get a Vagina from somewhere, if she ever wanted to have sex that is, Strangelouvre was the one they chose. Strangelouvre was the one behind all of it. All that Akane is or ever will be traces back to a man I hate like head-lice. He's the one who went inside of her. He's the one who made her a woman. That twisted, arrogant french fuck is the asshole I have to fucking thank for making my fiance fuckable? Fuck it.  
  
No way am I having anything to do with Dr. Strangelouvre. If that means losing Akane, so be it. We walk by my dad.  
  
"Ranma, I'm begging you. Please look at me."  
  
We Walk by Mr. Tendo and we're out the door. All I can see is Strangelouvre, All I can think is Strangelouvre. He ruined my life, and he will pay. We're at the gate, and it's open I put my shirt all the way on.  
  
"Ranma, Please. Don't leave me Ranma, I love-."  
  
I turn and slap her across the face. All I heard was love. I could only react, somehow. No one else heard it. Nothing else happened.  
  
Cause and effect.  
  
And life goes on.  
  
How did that make you feel?  
  
She collapsed onto the ground, and rubbed her soft, virgin skin into the dirt. Muddying the ground with her tears.  
  
Looking off into the night, I told her not to catch a cold. I walked away.  
  
The bread was as good as dough. my fingers were beginning to sink into it. The intese heat, and muggy air along with the splashing of the heated bath were wearing my ability to fight thin. Also I couldn't focus. I know I was supposed to be thinking about Strangelouvre, but I couldn't.  
  
Akane. Akane. Akane.  
  
Goddamit, I can't stop thinking about her.  
  
With every swing Kodachi blows aside the rising steam and her eyes pierce through with as much furvor for hating Strangelouvre as I hold. I struck back with my strength, but how can you focus after such a trialing ordeal? She Jumps into the air, and lands poolside, I follow swiftly, and strike a baseball bat swing at her bread.  
  
On impact, the top of her bread came flying off. I quickly recoiled to swing the finishing blow to her head. She blocked with the brunt of her bread, and now the impact knocked my bread tip out. I grabbed it by the middle, and tried a nice dagger thrust. She tried to block it, but her bread broke to pieces. My blow made it through only to turn into gooy mush on Kodachi's towel.  
  
Immediately I threw the dough away, snagged the bread out of her hand, and chucked it aside. I tripped her to her back, ripped the towel off of her, and she screamed. Next thing I know, she's hit me so hard I saw stars, and there I am propped above her. Her eyes are filled with some reall terror, the likes of which I don't think she ever knew before.  
  
I'm back to my sences. So you could say.  
  
I look down at the mess I have made. Broken bread. Torn towel. Naked Kodachi.  
  
That fucking Akane. Not fucking Akane.  
  
I look at Kodachi and I tell her, Strangelouvre won't get the better of us. I told her I wouldn't let him get her too. I told her I'd beat him. Then I collapsed onto her, held her tight, and as I started to feel tears flow from my eyes, I told her to hold me for a little while.  
  
Cause and Effect.  
  
Akane gets Testicular feminization, and I fuck Kodachi Kuno's brains out.  
  
Envious?  
  
Are you?  
  
Don't 


	11. Ranma on togetherness

Cause: 11

---------

I know the rules.

Once you mate with the black widow, your life is over.

She eats you whole.

Having sex with Kodachi. Thinking about Akane all along. This must be what cheating is like. This isn't just Shampoo curled up next to me without my noticing, or spending the night at Ukyo's because Happosai is on a rampage, this is it. I've actually fucked Kodachi Kuno. I did it. Where's the achievement? Where's the glow? What's going on here? What is this?

The steam is rising around my head, and my body is immersed. I'm looking up at the ceiling in Kodachi's bath. She's right next to me, and her pony-tail is damp, so it's slender, and singular like a snake above the water's surface, but underwater, it splashes off her shoulder and the black strands seem to go everywhere like spilled coffee. Some of her hair is lying over my chest, as I hold her to me and look up at the ceiling, into the flashing blue burns.

It's easy to deal with because it's quiet. I hear water dripping into the bath, I hear Kodachi's breath coming in and going out. Faintly I hear the distant hum of the lightbulb filaments above me. It's so calm right here. The water is just a little warmer than body temperature, so you really can hardly feel a thing. When Kodachi moves her leg againt mine, that's all I can feel. The sensory deprivation is so bad, that when she rolls over, so she's lying next to me it feels like a giant glove just got pulled off my whole body.

Akane. If you could only see me now. You tried so hard Akane, to make me see you as a woman. You did your best to keep me from walking away. Look where it got you. Look where it got me. Us.

If cause and effect is the way the world works, then this was already destined to happen. Cause and effect, therefore cause is effect. Hand in hand. From the moment we met, this is how we were supposed to be. Divided and miserable. I can't believe that even being born is cause enough for this. The blue burns and the lights are fighting each-other for control of the visual center of my mind. This way, sometimes I see blue, sometimes white, sometimes both. It gets easy to confuse the lights with the burns.

I feel a pinch on my shoulder and I look over. She bit me, and she growls. Then she pulls her teeth off, and smiles so smoothly that I couldn't say when her snarl face ended and her smile face began.

"You did wonderfully Ranma, darling."

When I said I just had sex with her, perhaps it was a slight understatement.

"I didn't know I could come that hard."

Definately a noticable understatement.

"Third time's the charm, right?"

Huge understatement.

She casts-off me and rolls her body over. Her nipples stick up like gum-drops. They're different than Akane's, which aren't as perky. She floats away from me for a while, and I get to watch her sink a little, then float a little every time she breathes.

"Want to do it some more?"

For this whole time, I've known that what I've been doing was in poor taste, but this is the first moment when I realized it was actually wrong. Another round with the black rose is not what I had in mind. I'm tired. It's late. What time is it?

"Don't know Ranma, dear, but what's the rush?"

I stand up and sheets of steaming water pour off me. I turn and pick up Kodachi's bath towel. Does she mind if I use it?

"Feel free, darling."

I try to dry off quickly. My boxers are the first to go on, and they cling to every slightly damp part of me as I rush to assemble my stuff.

"Really, darling you're in an awful hurry."

Half thinking of the consequences when I say it, I tell her I have to go back.

She strokes her way to the side of the bath, brings her front half over and crosses her arms, so that she can prop herself up on them.

"Fine, darling but what is it you're going back to?"

I stopped, and I couldn't think of anything. My mind was a blank. Whether I couldn't imagine what would happen if I went back, or just didn't want to, I don't know. I just said, again, that I have to go back.

"I think you should go back and tell them the truth." She stands up, dripping wet and walks over to me. "Tell them that it's all over."

My shirt is on, but the buttons are all undone. Nothing is over, look, I say. I say that things are just getting out of hand right now, with Dr. Strangelouvre, and all that. I just have to straighten a few things out with Mr. Tendo, and everything will be fine soon enough.

"Fine, then go, darling." She gives me a smile that I swear was creepy. You'd think that getting what she was after since the day we met would satiate her. Not a prayer. "You're always welcome here." She picks up the towel, and starts to dry her hair.

"It's your fault I'm all wet, darling."

No it's not.

"Yes it is, it's all your fault."

She was in the bath before I even got in this room. Time to leave. My shirt is buttoned up and I'm ready to go.

"All your fault."

She looks up at me, towel over her hair, and squints her eyes, and I don't answer. She drops the towel. With her next move, she's got my right hand, and started running it on the beaded water all over her skin, as my hand went across her shoulder.

"You were the one that made me get wet."

She moves my hand over her breasts.

"All your fault..."

Over her belly button. Now lower.

"...That I'm so wet."

Then-

Then I-

Moving on.

The stark contrast couldn't be worse. It is nothing but cold and dark outside. I could feel the temperature clinging to me like cellophane as I left the Kuno residence. It's 2:00 AM, too late for anything, and I have to get home, or somewhere. The sky is cloudy, even though it was clear before, so no moonlight. To me it seems every couple or so lamp-post has a bulb that is shorting out and flashes on-off-on-off. Reliable enough to see at least.

So, I walk my way back to the Tendo Dojo, and wouldn't you know it, right inside the Gate, I am greeted by a most unpleasent portrait. On the porch I see, basically the whole household: two dads, Two sisters, P-chan and the old freak. Nabiki and P-brain are both awake, so they turn, and wake up the others.

"He's back. He came back. Wake up" and "Oink, oink, oink." All eyes turn to me.

I look down near my feet and there, wrapped in a thick blanket, my fiance is bunched up and asleep, parked in the same spot by the gate that I last left her in. I wonder if I should wake her? I bet reality has to be worse than any dream she could be having right now.

I won't tell you what happens next until I've told you this. I won't tell you about tomorrow until I tell you of now, at this moment, on this line, in this time, from my mind.

Cause and effect.

The way the world works.

Cause and effect.

One damn thing after another.

Cause and effect.

Trapped in our dreams.

And now-

I kneel down next to her. Her head is turned slightly to the side. She's looking away from me. Last time we were like this, I told her about that I knew she had TFM. Only I was on the ground, and she was knelt above me. The situations are reversed now, but it still sucks to be me. It still sucks to be her. The truth still sucks.

Her eyes are closed, she's not looking at me when I start to talk to her. I look down at her, and I say this;

And I quote,

"Akane, I've done something so horrible to you tonight, that I hope you never wake up. If you could sleep, be like Urashima Taro or Rip Van Winkle, just sleep me by. I'm not worth getting up for at this point. You tried to show me what you wanted me to see, show me the way I should see it. To make me know that I knew you? Some plan. The problem was me, the problem is still me. I'm not sorry that we met, I don't hate you, and I can't. I hated Strangelouvre. I hate him for so many reasons but mainly because of you. Because you knew him first, you knew him least, and he did so much after you barely met him. He's an arrogant ass, who has done nothing but scorn me since I first met the bastard. It was too easy. Hatred is just an emotion, when you feel it, it can control you as much as joy, fear or love. Over all the emotions I've been feeling these past weeks, I chose to hate someone. To hate him at the expense of everything. When all this is over, I'll only have my hate left, and I'll have lost you...fuck...forever. I'm not sorry. If I ever feel sorry it'll only be feeling sorry for myself, in weakness. I'll wake you up now, and get you to bed, maybe tomorrow I'll tell you about what just happened."

End quote.

I reach my hand out and start to shake her shoulder a little.

"What do you mean? What just happened?" Her voice is groggy, just out of dreamland.

Akane? She hasn't moved. How much did she? She hasn't opened her eyes. What did she?

What just happened?

She's waiting for an answer. Oh my God, no.

"You went to Kuno's, right? French bread Fuu, right? What just happened?"

She's not looking at me when my breath starts to get sporadic. She's not looking at me, when my eyes shut and I see myself banging Kodachi over and over in the huge steamy tub.

On the floor.

Up against the wall.

In her bedroom.

She doesn't turn. She doesn't move.

"You were with Kodachi, right? You left hours ago, right? What just happened?"

Will she look at me? Will she hear me out?

"Shut the fuck up."

She's not looking at me when my throught tightens, when my stomach turns.

"She loves you, right? She wants you, right?"

Akane.

"What just happened?"

Now she's looking at me. Now I'm not looking at her. I'm not looking at her when her arm wraps around my neck, and starts to clamp up on my windpipe. Her skin is as soft as I remember it. She's as naked as I left her, and just as passionate as ever. I cannot breathe.

"She was good, right, Ranma? She's more a woman than I'll ever be, right?"

I rotate, giving my whole neck a rope-burn against Akane's arm as I contort to take in a breath of air.

Feel my pain.

This is how I learned to relate to women the hard way.

I read in the paper about how so and so commited suicide by hanging. People actually hang themselves. No quick poison, no gun to the head, no car crash, or dive off a high rise, nothing quick. You'd have to be pretty bad off to want to put yourself through two minutes of this. What if you're dangling there, and you change your mind? You can spit out a pill, put the gun down, turn the car to safety, or step back from the ledge. Saving yourself is just a choice away. But what if, hanging there, you decided the one thing you want more in this world is that next free-breath of fresh air? What then? How could anyone ever want to die like this? I don't. It's a lousy way to go.

One breath. That's it. I get one breath and she closed her arm back tight on my jugular.

Does she hate me?

"What?"

I can breath out, not in. Lungs push better than pull I suppose. Diaphragm, whatever. With your head in the crotch of a womans elbow, and her joint pinching in on your larynx, your voice has a whisping sound to it, like air let out of a tire. Hence the term wheezing. People have died in this position and anything you say just wastes precious air.

Does she hate me? Another bit of air I can't get back.

My diaghram pumps up and down, wanting to breathe agian, all it can do is pressurize my chest. I have to know.

Does she hate me? My lungs go dry.

Think stretched, empty baloon. Think plastic bag stuck in a vacuum cleaner hose.

Think how I must have felt walking home tonight.

Her grip goes loose, I drop to the ground and gasp in air and sand that sticks in my mouth and throught. I'm coughing. Akane gets up, and collects her blanket. She didn't answer me.

"Yes I did."

I don't remember hearing it. She looks down on me, in the dirt.

"I want you to die. I hate you so much that it makes me hate myself. I hate you more than Kodachi. I hate you more than Dr. Strangelouvre."

I look up. She looks down. Her blanket over her shoulder like a robe. She looks lke a queen.

"But I don't really hate them that much, so let me say...I hate you more than you could ever hate him."

My view is skewed, because I'm on my side. She walks away, with her blanket brushing the ground, her majsety walks to the porch, and the peasants part the way, and hold the door open for her. One at a time, everyone goes inside, Nabiki, Mr. Tendo, pop, Happosai, P-chan. Kasumi alone stood.

"Ranma, could you lock the door when you come in?"

I don't want to speak, so I just give her the thumbs up. She steps inside, and the door, silently, is closed shut.

I wake up, and there are only clouds. No rain and no sun, just a big grey blanket from east to west. This is the last day before I fight Strangelouvre, this is my first day after Akane has told me she truly hates me, my first day as Kodachi's sex-partner. This is my gray little day. I look over to where I expected I'd either see an endangered creature indigenous to secluded sections of China, or my father. What I see is a letter addressed to me.

I pick it up and open it, not even half wondering why pop's stuff is all gone.

"Ranma,

By the time you read this I will have embarked for a journey"

Journey has a line through it.

"pilgrimage of the highest order, to seek a martial arts master that lives high on a mountain"

Mountain has a line through it.

"In a deep valley, a village some distance from here. He has a technique involving sound, to focus attacks. I'm sorry I didn't tell you this sooner, I only found out about it yesterday after dinner. I saw it on TV,"

No he didn't.

"I received a letter, shortly after you left, from a school that I had once practiced with to depart when it suited my"

Line.

"immediately. I had planned to tell you, but you just came home too late, that's all. I may not be leaving you in the best situation, but this ordeal"

He's exed out ordeal.

"present moment is something that you as a man and martial artist should be able to handle. I don't know what made Akane so angry, son but whatever the reason, I want you to know that I'll always believe in"

Line through that.

"Love you, son.

-Pop."

The moral of the story, if you have no idea what you are going to write, just don't use a pen. I hear the door open and shut.

"Going somewhere, Mr. Saotome?"

"Kasumi?" My dad says. "Just planning on taking a hike today."

He must have wrote this letter up in five minutes, and he's only now leaving. Something I should have seen coming. This may be the worst getaway in history. He's far enough away that I won't stop him, though. A getaway is a getaway is gone.

"Would you like some breakfast first?"

"Breakfast?"

You've got to be kidding me.

"Well, I guess I shouldn't leave on an empty stomach."

Dammit. I head for the bathroom, fill a bucket with cold water, and head downstairs. Oh, father. Your getaway is a getaway is done for. I splash the big guy. The now-panda turns and his eyes get so huge inside the black-spots of his fur.

Doesn't he have a quest to go on? Isn't there someplace he should go? Shouldn't he be running scared by now?

The panda lunges for its backpack, and heads out the door as if he was running from sure extinction.

"Ranma? Are you alright?"

Kasumi's looking up at me from the table. Already clearing Pop's dishes off. I tell her that I could be better, and I sit down to eat a little steamed rice.

"Something happened between you and Akane last night didn't it?"

Looking down into the bowl that has its rim shoved into my mouth, I nod. For a while, I think Kasumi was at a loss for words, then she spoke up to me again.

"Well, I can only say that what I saw was shameful, it was odd, and I must confess, it made me somewhat bewildered."

I put the bowl down. The sound it made when it hit the table sounded empty.

I know, Kasumi. It was really all my fault. I need to see her. I need to talk to Akane.

"I brought her a blanket, and when I did she said you hit her, she said you hate her."

That's not the point, I say. I say that the real important matter is not what I did, what am I supposed to do about it? Appologize? I already did that. I can't fix any of it. I would If I could, but I have to move forward on this if it's going to be better. Is she coming to breakfast?

"Ranma, Akane needs some time to herself right now, so this morning she left."

I feel a shock over my whole body. I gasp in a deep breath, mouthing the word what. Then I breathe out.

What?

"She left this morning. Poor girl, didn't get much sleep. I came down the stairs, and there she was in the living room with her things all packed. She said she was just going to a friend's house for the day."

Did she say who?

"No, Ranma, just that she'll be back tomorrow."

She left me.

This was not how it was supposed to happen. This is not what I want. I don't want Akane hating me the rest of her life. Today I was going to set everything right. Today, I was ready to do anything. Whatever it would take to bring her back. Today, she was going to stop hating me.

I had it all planned. When I got up, when I walked to the door last night. When I went up the stairs. I was going to spend the whole day getting it right. Making up. If that's what you want to call it.

I fucked up.

Kodachi means nothing to me.

Don't hate me.

I had it all planned, as I walked to my room, collapsed on the floor, and knew I could make it alright again.

Tomorrow I fight Strangelouvre.

Tomorrow I was supposed to fight for her.

Today was supposed to be special.

"She told me to tell you not to look for her. She also said you should leave."

I'm not leaving, not until I can talk with her. I look down into the empty bowl.

"Well, alright, Ranma. I don't know exactly what's going on between you two, but you've both fought alot before, so maybe you can fight this one out too. Do your best OK?"

There was rice here once. It's gone now, but I don't feel hungry or filled.

"Ranma?"

I look up. I'll do my best, Kasumi.

"That's good." She smiles, just as a voice snaps out from behind me.

"Ranma."

I turn and Mr. Tendo walks by heading for the porch.

"Come with me son."

I stand up slowly, and head out with him to the deck, where he closes the door.

"Lets have a seat."

So we sit.

The goldfish stirring.

Knock of the empty bamboo.

A scary silence.

"I always wanted a son, you know."

I turn to him.

"A son, boy. When my wife was first pregnant, I thought for sure, I would have a son."

I take in an uneasy breath. It's always hard to listen to the lecture before we get to the meat of the matter.

"Ryuichi. I told her. That would be the name of my son. My son was on the way. I was so certain. To myself, and sometimes aloud I would call the child Ryu, before it ever came. My wife took it in stride, and warned me not to be all too certain. She said if it was a girl we should name her Kasumi, kind of rubbing it in my face that I couldn't see anything but a son. Kasumi was born, and I never once regreted having a daughter."

I feel like I stepped out onto the porch, and found myself in an insurance company commercial.

"Then the second came. This time he would be named Yohei. Yohei if it was a boy, and then I told her, Nabiki if it's a girl. Nabiki because not everything goes quite as you planned, the road may wind, as long as you have a starting point and a destination, you have things to do."

Right now my biological level is probably working on the rice I apparently ate, altering the chemical composition of my cerebro-spinal fluid to deal with the grey, bla, dirty-cotton sky, breaking ATP down so I can breathe again.

Fuck my biological level. I'm thinking of one thing.

"When my third came along. My wife told me in bed on a nothing-out-of-the-ordinary autumn night. For a while, I did as I have done, laughed a little, held back tears, told her I loved her. Then I did something I hadn't done for either of my other two daughters. I put my hand on my wife's belly, and proclaimed 'Akane.' No boys names. I wouldn't even consider them. I knew what was coming."

He shifts his weight and scooches slightly on the porch. I sense a punchline coming.

"Nine years later, do you know what happened?"

I've been set up. Mr. Tendo appearently thinks this is the moment when he 'informs' me of the vital facts. The TFM. Whether he knows that I know I'm not sure, but there was one way to be done with it. Silence. After a while I asked if he was going to tell me or was he waiting for me to say something?

"Put it in your own words."

So he knows I know.

"I know you haven't got a clue about it. You may have heard it from Dr. Strangelouvre, you may have talked about it with Akane, but you have never seen what I have seen. So put it in your own words, son."

I say to Mr. Tendo that Akane turned out to be his long awaited 'son' if you will. Imagine waiting years for something. So long you end up giving up on it. Then you find out you had it all along in a form you could never deal with.

How did that make you feel?

How do you feel?

Talk about that.

Mr. Tendo turned to me and said,

"Wrong boy. Akane is my daughter. Akane will always be my daughter. She is my little girl, and you could never understand that. I don't care what Dr. Strangelouvre says. I don't care what her case may be. She is my little girl, who is taking long strides to becoming a woman. Indeed, I have never seen a woman's spirit like hers. From where I sit, boy, all I can see is someone who has crushed that spirit. What have you done, Ranma?"

Maybe I could have been more angry than I was, but all I was really thinking was that Mr. Tendo just couldn't see things the way I had seen them. He had 9 years to get to know, and be with Akane before he found out, and she and I have known each other just a fraction of the time. The way I saw it, the problem was simply in timing.

Sorry, Mr. Tendo. The shock was just too much for me at the time. It totally caught me off guard. I'm sorry it happened that I hurt her, but it could have been avoided, if you had told me earlier.

"Earlier?" He asks. I finally think I got him on a thought path he hasn't considered. This whole thing may have turned out differently if he'd have told me before it came to this. Cause and effect, right?

"How much earlier, son? When would have been the best time?"

I half smile and say that since I turned out to be boy and girl on the day we first met, I think that would have been the best time to tell me. He smiles.

"Oh, I see. Good point. I could have introduced my daughters, and said this is Kasumi, my oldest, Nabiki my second, and Akane my youngest. Then I could have told you, that there was something different about Akane. Am I right? Akane, she's my daughter, and I love her as much as the others, but there is something different about her you should know. You should know she has a flaw, you should know things aren't what they seem. You're right, of course, you should know because there is something wrong with her isn't there? Something you could never get your head around. I should have said here are my three daughters, but don't pick Akane, She's not good enough for you. Am I right?"

By the time he was done Mr. Tendo was just about barking in my face like a chained rotweiller. I sit there, not planing to go anywhere, when he stands up.

"You have tonight, Ranma. Sleep well. After that, wherever you go, I don't care."

Mr. Tendo leaves. I don't feel angry. I don't feel sad. I don't feel anything. I don't feel hungry.

Rice is nothing except light and white the way clouds aren't even worth noticing until they cover everything.

Next thing I know, I wander into the dojo. It all started here. This is where I first really met Akane. Thinking back, I can only say, we liked each other best in that one moment when we knew nothing at all about each other.

The problem was the getting to know you part.

I pick up the bread I left in the dojo overnight, and it's as tough on the outside as a tree-limb. The moisture's all gone out of it, and trying to eat it now would be like biting into a dry sponge, but it's still worthwhile to me. Even without Akane or anyone else behind me, I can still take down Dr. Strangelouvre.

I leave the dojo, and to my left I hear a voice.

"Hello, Ranma."

I turn and before I can even look him in the eye, from behind me, my arms are drawn back and locked, with fists pushing into my shoulderblades. I try to lunge my legs out to escape, but a foot slams down on my toes, locking me in place. Ryoga caught me off-guard.

"You weren't at the session yesterday, Ranma" I hear Noitaru say from behind. "Personally I would have let it slide, but Ryoga got in contact with me earlier this morning and said we all needed to talk about it."

I don't say anything, Ryoga smiles, or sneers. I couln't really tell, it was a little of both.

"I never knew you could hurt Akane as badly as I saw last night."

I try to muscle-out my arms, but they are cranked back, and the fists dig harder into me.

"Did you see her, Ranma? She looked like angel. The way she followed you, and called to you. All you did was keep walking. I saw you leave, I saw you hit her. We all did."

Suddenly, I'm forced to recall how very visible and unignorable I was yesterday. All the eyes looking, looking. They followed me all the way out the door, all the way to the gate. Maybe even further, for all I know there are a pair of eyes that saw me all the way into Kodachi's house.

Eyes that saw everything. Looking, looking, looking.

They're in my own head. Ryoga holds up a stone between his fingers that's small and smooth from lifetimes of sitting at the bottom of a river, somewhere. He holds the stone up to my forehead.

"It feels so good, and hurts so bad at the same time, Ranma. I know that she'll never come back to you again. She's finally free. Now that she's left you, she and I can finally be what we were meant to be. For that, I am nearly tempted to thank you. But as for everything else that I saw, there ignites in me such hatred. That I must give you your final punishment."

He raises up his pointer-finger, and starts to move it slowly, slowly towards the rock held against my skull.

"Ryoga, this may be counter-productive."

Ryoga pulls both his hands away, then puts one on the top of my head, and forces it down. He has to point my face at the floor, if he wants to talk to Dr. Noitaru, because I'm about his height.

"Dr. Noitaru, You completely underestimate this asshole's treachery. Last night, he treated his fiance so awfully that I can barely even mention it without feeling my heart break."

From here I can see nothing that really matters. Dr. Noitaru wears black-top basketball Nikes.

"I'm not saying that he hasn't wronged you and many people, but we were making headway on the new angle of non-aggressive compromise, and fear management."

"Fear?" The hand goes off my head, and I look up, only to look back down again, as my body cringes. I look down and Ryoga's punching my stomach over and over.

"You think I fear this wretch? All he's done is make my life more miserable every single day."

My whole stomach gets a through and through aching feeling, from the stinging spots on my skin where his fists impact, to the guts deep inside. It feels like he's pounding me into hamburger.

"I will not fear him, doctor. And by the way, this is the best therapy I've ever had."

He plants one final punch at the base of my ribcage, and I bite down on my cheek from the pain.

"You were right at the beginning." He hoists my head up, and with the same hand, puts the stone back on my forehead. His pointer finger is right next to it. "Let the rite of passage begin."

"Ranma!" I hear calling from inside the house. It's the old freak. Ryoga looks over at the house, then back at me, sneering.

"Then again, perhaps not." Ryoga touches his finger to the stone, and the smooth edges blast apart, and make jagged teeth that shoot in every direction from my forehead. It felt like a heavy punch, with a train behind it. My head flies back, then forward, and Noitaru lets me go, as I land in a heap at the dojo's entrance.

"See you later Ranma. Maybe tomorrow at your big fight."

Lying there with the wooden dojo porch pressed against my cheek, I shut my eyes as the blood begins to trickle sideways down my brow.

"Ranma, do you know what truly makes a martial artist?"

At that moment all I was really feeling were the cuts that were left on my forehead, from the exploding stone that Ryoga had pressed against me. All of them are sticky and bound to the white cotton square taped to my forehead. I'd just come in from getting jumped by Ryoga, and I could only have enough time to bandage up my head before Happosai corners me and brings me to his room, where he asks me about my conviction to martial arts. I don't answer him.

"What makes him a martial artist are good morals."

He looks down, lightly running the hot iron over the soft pink cloth of the panties he's pressing.

"Martial arts is not merely being the best, being the strongest, or being undefeated. All anyone can do in this world is fight for what they believe in. Therefore, if one has a corrupted morality, he fights for corruption, he ceases to be a worthy practitioner of martial arts."

He runs his fingers on the tiny bow on the front of the panties, straighting it before flipping the underwear over. Lightly depressing the steam button, he irons again, pressing the tiny cloth.

"A corrupted mind is the last thing that the school of anything-goes martial arts wishes to foster into a student."

For a while he doesn't say anything as he was focused on getting a good press. This is just a ritual for him, anyway. He doesn't need to press his confiscated underwear, because he only ends up throwing it into a big basket again, for him to caress. Jump on. Swim in. Sleep with.

He sets the pair he just finished ironing back into his pile of cleansed, ironed garments, and quickly picks up one that is fresh from the wash, quickly smelling the material before laying it flat.

"White satin, so sweet, so soft. Where was I?"

Bad morality.

"Ah, yes." He goes back to ironing "After your dispay last night I, the Grand-Master of the Anything-Goes School of martial arts, was given serious doubts as to your ability to uphold our tradition of pride, and honor. I'm telling you this, because the decision is in my hands. It's not a duty between you and me, but rather between ancestors and decendants."

He flips the soft, sweet white satin panties over and irons the back.

"You see, you yourself will become my age, Ranma, you may be able to teach others, the ways of our ancestors. We are but conduits for them, passing the torch from those who lit it to those who will be guided by its light. If you are morally corrupt, I cannot allow you the honor of passing on our tradition."

He sets the iron down. Steam rises from it for a moment with a slight hiss, then it goes silent and hot.

"So, you're out, kid. I'm not saying you can't be a martial artist anymore, but know this, your time under my dicipline is done for, got that?"

I roll my eyes.

Whatever, you old freak. If the underwear-stealing, grabby, lewd, boozing master of the anything-goes school says I'm morally bankrupt, then who am I to argue? I don't want this stupid school anyway.

"Hm, you also never learned any damn manners." He picks up another pair of panties. "What the?" He now examines them more closely. "I've never seen a fiber like this. What's with it?" He throws it at my face "What do you make of it, boy?"

My first thought is how angry I am.

My first thought is how insulted I am.

My next thought is that he's right. There is something different about these. They smell sweet, but the material doesn't feel strong enough at all to stay on a woman all day long. I pull it off me, and check the waistband, where the tag should be. The whole story is right there, two words written in rose letters on the cloth.

Edible.

Cherry.

"What did you say?" The freak moved so fast, I didn't even see a blur. Next thing I know, he's knocked me down, and he's on my belly, holding his new found treasure.

"Oh, my God. To think that something so sweet, so rare would find its way into my posession. To think I would soil it by having it touch the face of this swine."

I take a swing at him, but he jumps away before it could make contact. He's by the door of the room now.

"I've got better things to do with my time than waste it with you, boy. You've heard my verdict, now get out of my sight."

With that, he ran down the hall chanting what a score. What a score. What a score.

I had to find Akane. I was done with all the crap I had to put up with in this house. She has to be out there, somewhere. I know I can find her. I left the Dojo and headed for all her friends houses, all of them that I knew anyway.

My life is falling apart.

Everyone is leaving me behind.

Everyone is against me.

I need you now.

I didn't eat lunch; I didn't feel hungry. I couldn't tell what time it was because I didn't have a watch and the sun was covered up by this gigantic grey sheet of clouds.

I went to every house. Every store. Every place.

Haven't seen her.

Is she missing?

I saw her the day before yesterday.

Shouldn't you know?

I think...No wait, that wasn't her.

No idea.

Nothing.

Nowhere.

I go to Shampoo. The sun must be setting, because the sky is a dark grey. Had she seen her?

"Why you no look for Kodachi?"

What?

"She is say that Ranma and Akane is no longer together."

What does Kodachi have to do with this?

"She come here and say Shampoo give up for Ranma. Shampoo no be with Ranma as Kodachi has. She is also say so to Ukyo and Akane too."

Oh, fuck. I turn and run out the door, and Shampoo's voice gets smaller and smaller, and begins to be layered over by passing cars, as I run to the Kuno's house.

"Welcome back, darling."

She where been? Akane when here?

"Do catch your breath, dear."

I lay my back on the wall, and let myself slide all the way down to the pavement. Heaving for breath, starving and gazing into the grey sky.

Was she here?

"Akane? Well, I did get up rather late, being up till 2:00 and all. But as it happens, yes Ranma, dear I did see her."

When? What happened.

"Did he fuck me? What a rude way to ask. Did we make love? Yes, dear, over and over, my dear. Into the late hours. Ranma darling was inside me. Making me a woman."

I close my eyes. I can't believe she came here. Of all the places.

"What nerve, right?"

What nerve. She knelt down next to me and put her arms over my shoulder.

"Now I have you again, darling. It's time for you to admit it. Admit it to yourself. I'm all you have now. tomorrow you will defeat Dr. Strangelouvre for me, and our consummation will not have been in vain. tomorrow you will make everything right again. Now, come inside. I'll make you something to eat."

I stand up and she leads me inside the gate. Her soft hand on my shoulder.

I wanted so much to go inside. I wanted so much to be wanted. I was so hungry, and lonely, but I stopped. She stopped. I looked her right in the eyes, and I asked her.

You love me don't you?

"I do darling. Like I could love no other. Do you love me?"

I answered immediately, with a voice as dark and grey as the sky.

No.

Tears. Real earnest tears started to form in her eyes, and as they began to slide almost rollercoaster-style down her face, big and fast at first, but smaller and slower when they reached the bottom of her cheek.

"I don't care. My love for you will shine the brightest for us both. Be with me darling, and even if you never love me at all, I will always love you."

More than anything I wanted to go inside, more than anything I wanted to be wanted, I wanted to know someone and know that I knew them. But I left.

I hadn't found what I'd been seeking. There was only one place left to go. No lunch, no dinner, no welcome matt. I had tonight. After that, nobody would care.

I slide open the door, one question.

Did she come back yet?

The response was from everyone and almost musical.

Noooo-ooooo.

I give up. It's over. Nabiki comes running up to me, and holds out a piece of paper.

From Akane?

"It's for you."

I snag the paper quickly, and she smiles.

"There you go." She said, and turned around swiftly to go sit with her dad and Happosai in front of the TV.

Rent.

Goddamit.

Appearently I owe the Tendo family enough back rent to buy and furnish my own condominium. The fact that I had no money wasn't an issue, I could pay it back whenever, taking into account 10 monthly interest. I put the paper in my pocket and walk upstairs. Today was supposed to be special, it was anything but. At the top of the stiars, I see Kasumi right outside my door.

"Hello, Ranma."

I only nod.

"I put your french-bread in your room. You will be needing it, right?"

I only nod.

"Are you headed to bed already?"

I only nod.

"Well, did you have a good day?" She smiled, and tried to cheer me up. I looked her straight in the eye until she couldn't smile anymore. Hungry, exauhsted, alone. The pain of the scratches on my head still hadn't gone away. My guts still aching a little. I let her see it all, or at least I tried, until she could feel only akwardness. Her happy littlle world of a simple house, simple needs, simple life. Kasumi bleeds every day as if they were all the same, and what makes it worse is she's so happy with it all. She tried to shuffle by me and go downstairs, but I stopped her. I hadn't answered her question. Looking her straight in her eyes, which look more serious now than I ever thought they could be.

Shitiest most fucking horrible day of my entire goddamn life.

"I know." She says, looking straight at me "The whole day the sun never came out did it?" As if she could actually feel something sometime. "I hate when the sun doesn't shine. It makes me wish I'd stayed in bed."

She walked slowly, individually, down each stair.

"Goodbye, Ranma."

The fire always starts out small. It catches the curtain. The fires creep along the floor, they disperse and catch all along the ceiling. The wall becomes dotted with flames, they wrinkle, discolor, blister, and then blacken, as they burn into light ash that gets blown away by the fire's up-draft. By the time the fire gets to the hallway, it looks like the entrance to hell. Small kinling fires near the entrance of the house, and looking down the hall the fires get bigger and bigger, and there is nothing but an inferno in the family-room, red and orange fire, churning, burning it's way out. Nothing can stop the fire, every room in the house flares up. The wooden structure goes charred and weak, whole rooms begin to collapse triggering a rainfall of ceramic tiles, that first bury little bits of the fire, then disappear in a plume of black smoke, only to end up burning again when the flames find more fresh wood.

In my dream, suddenly I can see the whole house, birds eye view. Billowing in fire, and sending a long stream of black smoke into the sky. But there at the gate is a white soft light. A light I am familiar with. In my dream I can see her.

Kasumi.

She stands at the gate, looking at it, hypnotized by it.

Thank God almighty. I'm free at last.

All she ever worked on, everything in her simple life is going up into the sky, burned and worthless, and she smiles.

There's something in her hand. Something red, something on fire. She lifts it up, to look at it, her smile widening a bit more still.

She holds the flame closer and closer to her. The reflections of dancing orange in her eyes gets bigger and bigger. Then my shirt, my flaming, burning red shirt, my favorite shirt, is close enough to her face for her to light her cigarette.

She takes in a breath of smoke, and without a second glance to the house, throws the shirt on the ground and walks away.

Kasumi.

Next thing I know, she's above me. On top of me, straddling me. Her nightgown is white, and she looks so dreamlike, so pure. So why is she massaging my chest?

"Are you comfortable, Ranma?"

I nod, glancing left to right. It's my room in the dark. All around is an orange light. Fire light. A candle.

"I not as naive as everyone thinks I am, you know. I have my desires, I have needs too."

She rubs her hips into mine, slowly. Slowly. Perfectly paced. She breathes more heavily.

"Even I want to feel this, every once in a while." She looks at me. "Sometimes, I just want to free myslef. Most nights, I'm thinking about how dinner went, or what I'll make for breakfast, or what I have to clean. Then, as quick as a bullet, it will occur to me. My whole life is going to be just menus and cleaning supplies. My life will be simple and empty if I go to sleep every night knowing what I've done and what I'm obligated to do. I'm doing the same things all the time and not imagining what I'm capable of. If I don't do something fast, I won't do anything at all."

She bends over, and puts her hand on my shoulder. I'm looking down, her nightgown straight into her cleavage. She's forcing me to look there, propping my head up. Then she planted my face back, and ran both her hands down my cheeks.

"That's when it hits me. My great option. I don't have to do this shit. I could go to town, and drink myself onto the curb. Or I could dance until only the pills could keep me on my feet. Then, I'd love to find some boy, either a virgin, or a bodybuilder, take him home, and strap him to the floor. My ultimate fantasy. Sexing all night long. Fucking until I'm crying. The whole night through I could have absolute freedom. That way, if the sun didn't come out the next day, I could just say hell with it. I'm just staying in bed. Cook your own damn breakfast."

I try to say something. MMMFMMFMFFMMFFMFFM. Ms and Fs, this time it's a gag, not cleavage. I try to move my arms. Handcuffs.

Kasumi. The kind of Kasumi that would burn a whole house down has me at her mercy.

I try squirming, then there's a knife in my face.

"I know you fucked Kodachi. I'm not blind. I'm observant, and nobody knows, because nobody sees what I see."

The blade of this kitchen knife is against my nose, it's a flaying knife, I can tell by it's triangular shape, and fuck-off razor edge.

"Whenever I get this urge, and it is heavy, I stop. I stop because I have a duty to my family, you understand? The second I leave, and be what I want to be, this place would fall apart. Cause and effect."

My eyes blink and for no more than a second I look confused. Not to waste any time Kasumi turns the blade sideways and presses it down on my nose.

"Cause and effect, you dumb shit. Don't you know anything? It's how the world works. There's no way around it. Let me give you an example. The second I'm about to leave, one night it was friday, 12:30. Everyone was asleep. I had perfume, money, a short skirt, I was right by the door, I see the effect in my mind. Everyone falls apart. Nothing is sorted, nothing is done right, I'd have betrayed them. I'm the only fucking thing they've got left for a mother, and that's what I goddamn better well be. This is my effect, and I have to do it everyday."

She pulls the knife off.

"I took some responsibility, and went back to bed. The place I was going to be at burned down. It was on the second floor. Some drunken dumbass lit a broken whiskey bottle and that was that. Then it was 18 dead, 20 seriously injured, not one of them has ever left the hospital. Cause and effect."

At that moment it hit me. This is the real Kasumi. The one who rises up out of the flames, and cannot be touched. Her word is truth. Perfect and pure and honest. Her judgment is sound, and she has me at the end of a knife.

"The difference between us is that I chose to stand by my family and friends, and you chose to abandon them. What we have in common is that we both still lust. You motherfucker. You got away with it, didn't you?"

She pushes her nightgown into her crotch, and starts to knead her hips into me again.

"Oh, I can feel it. Your hard cock and nice, tight pussy. All these urges I hold on to. Everything I've kept myself from. You did it, and you got away with it. That's why I'm here, Ranma. Not for revenge, not family honor, and it's nothing personal. I'm Jealous. How come you get to have all the fun? You could have slept with my sister, and everything would have been fine, but you didn't. You went wild. You went all the way across town to get some ass. Kodachi Kuno?...please."

The hand on her crotch goes to mine, then tugs at my waistband.

"If you wanted to cheat on her, you could have just come to me. I've even thought about it. There were some late lonley nights. You were right down the hall, and I thought 'why shouldn't I?'"

She unbuttons my shirt. Puts the knife down at the center of my chest. Placing both her hands flat on my bare skin.

"Why shouldn't I?"

She picks up the knife, and points the dagger end right toward my heart.

"Why shouldn't I?"

My eyes go wide, my head starts shaking. Just beneath the gag, I'm screaming. She pust the knife aside, and slaps my cheek. Index finger to her lips.

"shhhhhh."

Suddenly, her hand goes off to the side, and picks up something, laying it flat on my chest.

Tuna. It's a tuna filet.

"Just another little fantasy of mine. Nyataimori."

I've heard of this. The deal is, a bunch of very horny men get together, and they hire a girl to lay down, stark naked. Next they cut up a bunch of sushi, prepare it, and they lay it out on the girl. They'll spend the whole night, slowly eating sushi, slowly undressing the table.

This is where perversity and art meet, in the stomach.

Kasumi adjusts the filet on my chest. Why it should be her dark fantasy to eat raw fish off me, I have no idea.

"Well, I coudn't imagine myself as a nyataimori girl. I just always wanted to put a spin on it. If it's eaten off the body of a woman, it should be prepaired on the body of a man."

She holds the knife up to her eye.

"Only fair, right?"

Before I can even squirm, the knife goes to the pink filet. Down it goes. The fuck-off razor edge slicing through the tuna, just like it would any meat. The blade cuts closer and closer to my bare chest, and you can tell, she's taking her time. I can see in the candle-light the pure-solid blade, glinting and wetening as it slices into the fish-meat, that solid orange line is the sharpened metal of the edge. Just as the blade is about to Make contact with my skin, she stops.

"Are you ready?"

I shake my head manicly. The way my heart is pounding, that knife will send high pressure blood streams all over the room, and ruin the walls. That, and I don't want to die.

She slices the knife down, all the way, then lifts, and the knife moves over to slice another segment, by the third, I was just shutting my eyes. I didn't want to look down, and see my heart beating in my own chest. Then I hear her announce; done!

She slamms the knife next to my ear, and my eyes jolt open from the shock. She's above me, and holding a long cut of raw meat. She pulls the gag off.

"Bon Appetit."

I tentatively open my mouth, and she drops the strand in. It tastes like tuna.

Suddenly, she wipes the fish off my chest. Her face dives down at me, so that her hairflows down next to our heads like a streamer. She's looking right at me, her face reflect the light of the flame.

"Now listen well, Ranma. If you thought today was shitty, wait until you see what I have planned for you tomorrow. If you're still in this bed in the morning you'll be a dead man."

Kasumi I-

She pushes a cloth to my face, and everything starts to Blur, until I can only see the orange-red hue of fire.

Next thing I know I'm leaning up in my room, gasping for breath. My hand is on my chest. Not a scratch. Outside, in the far distance I hear a roll of thunder.

It was 3:00 AM, too late for anything when I left the only place I could have called home.

-------

I wish to send my thanks to Soviet Inclination, who's behind me all the way.

Bricobrosse, who I'm glad I ended up talking to again.

Also Amy Lear, who helped me tone the chapter down a needed notch, and showed me that this story can relate to women, hard way or otherwise.

To my editors and hosts for their patience, communication and support,


	12. Ranma on Dr Strangelouvre

x Cause: 12  
  
Ranma on Dr. Strangelouvre ----------  
  
Gather round, ye children, a story I will tell.  
  
You know how it all ended, I just had to fill you in on how it started. That's really my story. You know the rest right? I get up and fight Dr. Stranglouvre for nothing. No honor in it really. I'm not fighting for Akane, not fighting for Kodachi, I could say I'm fighting for myself, but look where that got me.  
  
Here.  
  
Today, Sunday, Two days now and the sky is still gray. I wake up in the park, sitting among strangers. A little girl is drawing a picture of me, with a little bubble floating up out of my head. The bubble was empty.  
  
I was dreaming about something, then I woke up.  
  
What was I dreaming about little girl?  
  
I remember clearly. It's a black night, and I'm in the park, near where I am now actually. Sidewalk lights and leaves on the trees are mixing lights and shadows. A big man dressed all in tattered brown rags. Big and tall and nightmarish.  
  
Death.  
  
No, worse.  
  
Looked like Death's boss.  
  
His parole officer.  
  
He reaches out his hand and I take it. He's got though, calloused, dry leathery skin, like he cuts stone for a living. You could slice his hand with a combat knife and not draw blood. He takes my hand and tries to walk me up a set of crumbled ruined cement steps.  
  
They don't really go anywhere, and they get worse as you go. I can see them breaking off, and twisted sideways in big chunks. Apparently I have to climb them all. He leads me up these steps, when from behind me, I hear her.  
  
I look back and a girl who means allot to me called out my name. I go to hug her, and she's small and soft against me.  
  
I promise I'll forget about the other one. I'll let go of regret.  
  
Then I woke up and a little girl was drawing a picture of me.  
  
Of course I feel that way about girls, silly kid.  
  
She can't draw that. There's not enough room in the bubble.  
  
I tell her to let me see what she's got so far. So, she flips the pages over, and there's me, calm and asleep, with my travel blanket, and backpack and boobs.  
  
Oh great.  
  
It was cold, so I was hugging them upwards for warmth. Nothing was showing, so at least the picture was decent, but there is a bigger problem here. Imagine me going to a fight in this tits and ass body of mine. I'm supposed to be in a man-to-man fight in-  
  
Hey, what time is it? The girl turns.  
  
Naioki-san, She says, What time is it?  
  
A heavy-set, shirt-and-tie type guy looks at his watch. The way he looked at his watch kind of made me think that he was trying to make it look like he was't looking at me the whole time. You never can tell with people who sleep in the park, you know. He calls back at us.  
  
Oh, drat! That's some bad luck, I must say. I guess I overslept because I have to be someplace in thirty minutes.  
  
Her face goes eccentrically scared as only a child's can. You better Huuuuuurryyyyy.  
  
I will, thanks.  
  
HOT WATER, HOT WATER, and HOT WATER NOW!  
  
The little girl screamed after me; Wait! Wait! What were you dreaming about, that I can put in this bubble?  
  
Grabbing all my stuff, and my bread loaf, rushing away I scream back at her the first thing that came to mind.  
  
She smiled and waved. "OK, I love tuna sushi! Byeeeeeeee!"  
  
It's at this point when I'm running that I start to figure everything out. Cause and effect. That's it, and that's everything isn't it? Like a stack of dominos, no different than falling in love or earthquakes. These things happen. Kasumi, the bastion of all that is true said it, so who am I to deny it? Cause: I fell into the spring, effect: I'm cursed with a woman's body. Cause: The testosterone receptors in Akane did not function properly, Effect: she became a girl. Cause: I was horny, effect: Kodachi.  
  
It all makes sense.  
  
You can cause and effect everything, the whole universe is just another ticking clock when you think about it. Whether its ticking forward or counting down depends on you, but hey, you're just another slave to cause and effect anyway, so hell, what does that matter?  
  
No multiple choice divine destiny-  
  
A) I'm happy forever  
  
B) I live in misery  
  
C) I'll never have sex with the same woman twice.  
  
D) Both and  
  
Bullshit.  
  
Cause and Effect.  
  
They mark moving planets and eclipses like this, just put the information in a computer and it can predict any of it, just by what's causing worlds to move, and how they are affected. They map volcanoes and thunderstorms, migration. A smart enough computer could tell you how the world is going to end. Nothing really matters to me at this moment, I've really got nothing left, but I still get to have my own little life-changing revelation. That I can explain everything with just cause and effect. Don't believe me? Start at page 1, meet me back here. If you nod off, hit yourself.  
  
I'm not even looking back as I run. The sky gets darker; it's not that it's late. The clouds are getting thicker. Just a glance at them, and you'll expect to hear a rumble.  
  
Everything at Ukyo's smells really good right now.  
  
I could eat a placemat.  
  
"We're closed can't you read the sign?"  
  
Ukyo is turned away at the sink washing her pots and pans. I smell bean sprouts, batter, cheese, shrimp and sauce. I need some hot water.  
  
She Jerks her head up and almost turns to me, then she looks back down at her pots again slowly, like a slow-mo gun recoil.  
  
"It's you."  
  
Please, she's got to give me some hot water, I need to change right now.  
  
"I can't believe you."  
  
What?  
  
"She had to be kidding, right? You came here to tell me she was lying, right?"  
  
She can't mean...  
  
"The Kuno slut."  
  
Dammit, not now.  
  
I don't have time for this. I've got 20 minutes to change and get back to the park, so I need some hot water.  
  
"You want hot water? I'll get you hot water."  
  
She fills a glass when she turns the cold-water faucet on her sink. Ukyo comes over to the bar and pours the water onto the griddle, which plumes with steam. I'm really close to it, so I'm sent reeling back, as the hot steam instantly becomes cool dew on my face and hair. The water is stuck-on with every scent in the restaurant.  
  
"There you go, you son of a bitch, just put your face right on it, all the hot water you can handle."  
  
She jumps over the bar, every edge of her body pulls a trail of jet-steam over the counter before she lunges at me, and takes me to the floor. She hugs her face into my breasts. Perfect, I must be going for a record on making girls cry this week.  
  
"Why her? Ranma-honey, how could you?"  
  
Look, I was very vulnerable at the time. She shakes my shoulders and burys her face deeper in my chest. It's here on the floor I look up and realize the door is still open. A slender woman in triangle-lens glasses, and a bound-up hairdo just peeked inside to see what the commotion is about.  
  
"Liar! Liar! Liar! Just take a cold shower, that's all it takes for you, right? And then, the problem should be double solved! But no! You had to stay as a guy, didn't you? And then you...you...you...JACK...ASS...HOLE! You fucked her? Didn't you?"  
  
I'm just too far to reach the door and slide it shut. The woman at the door cocks her head. Blinks.  
  
Um, Ukyo...  
  
"NO! Ranma, I love you! I love you so much, Ra-sniff-Ra-sniff-Ra-sniff-Ranma!"  
  
Wave hello to the nice lady, I guess.  
  
"Is everything alright here?"  
  
I'm fine. How do you feel?  
  
"A little confused actually."  
  
Talk about that.  
  
"Talk about it?"  
  
Why not? Just talk about that. The lady at the door, she looks like a twenty-something post-grad, adjusts herself to be a bit more in the doorway, she also takes her glasses off. She's wearing a blue knee-high miniskirt and matching vest over a white short-sleeve blouse.  
  
"Well, I just got out of church and the first thing I see is this?"  
  
How did that make you feel?  
  
"Well, I don't think-"  
  
Talk about that. Out of the blue I realize that this is what it must be like to be Dr. Noitaru. All you have to do is ask, and listen, and that's it. Once you do that, the door is open, right? Everything can just flow from there. I am woman, don't just hear me, listen to me, have I got your attention? Because I'm ready to roar. So go on, pour out your soul. Open yourself up, It'll only make you feel better right?  
  
"Well to begin with, I always feel awkward coming out of church. It's hard being a newly converted Christian in a nation still holding to the tenants of Buddhism. I also find it find it especially...um...curious that I should well, um, well see...this."  
  
I nod, Ukyo is attempting cleanup on the last of her waterworks. The woman looks left then right down the street, then steps inside, shutting the door behind her. She kneels down and she's got a bible cradled in her elbow.  
  
"It's just such an odd occurrence that, you know...Maybe God's trying to tell me something."  
  
Well, talk about that.  
  
"Perhaps he's...she's trying to communicate that I should be comfortable with my lesbianism."  
  
How did...  
  
I look into her suddenly serious eyes.  
  
...that make you...  
  
she slides her glasses into her blue jacket pocket, and looks at me and Ukyo. Ukyo wipes her wet nose on my breasts, sniffing in deeply.  
  
...oh, shit.  
  
Ukyo leans up, the trails under her eyes are almost sunburn-red.  
  
"Who are you?"  
  
"Oh, don't mind me. Just getting advice from my girlfriend...Ranma here. Right, Ranma-chan?"  
  
At this moment, ironically enough, after meeting this Christian girl I'm fairly sure there is no God, because he would have mercifully smote my ass by now. This is just more cause and effect. Ukyo stands up, wipes her eyes and under her nose with her open palm, shakes her hair and looks back down at her visitor.  
  
"Well, you obviously don't know Ranma-honey very well, 'cause if you did, you know he's 100...Well at least 50 man."  
  
Smite me. God if you exist, and it's not just an action-reaction reality, now would be a perfect time.  
  
"Eeeew, you mean she's got both-"  
  
"NO!" Ukyo leans down and grabs my heels,  
  
"She's all woman, and He's all man and it would take too long for me to explain, so please just leave we're closed for the day." She starts dragging me out of the restaurant, to the stairwell. "You want Hot water, Ranma? I'll give it to you, upstairs in my shower. We are gonna have a little time together up there, and you have tons of explaining to do."  
  
No, way! If Ukyo's not gonna give me hot water, then I need to leave, and pronto.  
  
"What so you can go crawling back to Kodachi again? I swear! Cheating on your first, and most important fiancé! You! The Chinese girl, Kodachi, Akane, you're all in it together to torment me! So I swear, Ranma, only the fires of hell will loose these hands from you!"  
  
Her grip tightens, and my feet point outward under the tension of my Achilles tendon. She needs to let go.  
  
"You'll leave me Ranma, it's just like you! Forget it! I'll never let go, Ranma, never!  
  
A creepy kind of look arises in the woman's eyes. Think Akane. Think Kodachi. Think Ukyo. Think Shampoo. Think the all-ravaging all-consuming beast that is the female lebido.  
  
I try to dig my fingers into the wood floor as she drags me away, its hard because I'm laying on my back, but I'm not giving ground easily.  
  
"Wait, wait, wait!" The woman says, as she stands up and lobs her bible on the counter. "Now look, we're all girls here, right? I was just trying to have a little talk with Ranma, here, so if you don't mind, I'd like to I dunno, hang around...maybe just a little girl talk?"  
  
I roll myself over, to paw my way out of here. Ukyo torques me back, laying down. My arms go across the bare floor Jesus style. Lo, for here I am crucified, but maybe I still have 15 more minutes to get to the park.  
  
"What? You think I didn't hear you? Pouring your life out to strangers, Get out of my cafe, you fuckin' dyke."  
  
"Oh, that's fine talk coming from you." She steps forward, and gets right in Ukyo's face, and right over mine. Remember, Knee-high miniskirt, right? My eyes bulge, then shut, and shut tight.  
  
"Look, dyke, my shop is closed, so you mfmmm."  
  
Something just muffled Ukyo. Hand, cleavage, gag, it's anybody's guess from here. My ankles get pulled upward as Ukyo cringes.  
  
"You're a self-loathing cunt, aren't you? You think you can stand there and preach to me about being a dyke, when, hell, just look at yourself, my little flower. Trying to drag Ranma-chan here upstairs all for yourself, what? Just so she can be there for you to bitch at? 'Oh, I wish I could have turned out more like daddy wanted me to. Guys aren't really all that bad, right?' You want to have a man, you wish you could love a man, but you can't."  
  
Whoever this woman is, I hope she doesn't teach a Sunday school. That heavy-bellows sound, I assume is Ukyo getting more and more pissed off, but not doing much about it, because she's still got me by the ankles, squeezing them to the bone I might add.  
  
"I've seen your kind before, pancake chef. Hell, I've fucked your kind before. Still think you need a man, still denying who you really are. You know what you want, but you spend your whole life trying to convince yourself you really want something else. Make momma proud, show daddy he's got the perfect little girl, right?"  
  
Perfect little girl?  
  
After these last weeks, I can personally testify that those three words should never be in the same sentence.  
  
"Pancake chef, Will you take little Ranma-chan here, and try to make her your main man? Or are you gonna step up and admit to what you really want? Maybe she can thrill you like a man could, but she is what she is."  
  
"Try to play me for a dick, pancake chef, and I'll chop your pretty hair off for a souvenir."  
  
Dark and silence. All I know for certain is that Ukyo's hands are shaking, and this place still smells great. Ham, and milk. I can smell spices. There's cuttlefish out there, somewhere.  
  
Oh, God, I'm hungry.  
  
"Go on, hit me. I'll give you a free shot, just let go of Ranma-chan, and you'll have me all to yourself."  
  
I brace myself to bolt out the door. Nothing happens.  
  
"...No?"  
  
The hands around my ankles tremble. "OK. Hey, Ranma-chan how's the view down there?"  
  
I have my eyes closed, and I'd like it very much if she'd leave us in peace, there's allot more going on here than she thinks.  
  
"Ranma-chan, I suggest you open your eyes, because you'll be looking at that for quite a while."  
  
Out of the blue I realize that this is what it's like to be Dr. Strangelouvre. Women have needs, right? They need to feel safe, secure. It's like what Akane said, they need to know they are women or some shit like that, healthy women. So doctor, in your professional opinion, am I a model of womanhood? Peer within, and see how real I am. So go on, pour out your soul. Open yourself up, It'll only make you feel better right?  
  
I clench my eyes tighter. I'm in a bit of a hurry right now, so if she'll just-  
  
"I was in a bit of a hurry myself, Ranma-chan, and my legs are rather tired. If neither of you mind I think I'm going to have a seat, right where I am."  
  
"ffffmmmfmfmmfmmf-Don't you fucking dare!"  
  
Suddenly out between the smell of the beans, and the chives and the scalops, over the smell of the onions, and the soy I get a powerful whiff of a brand new scent.  
  
It's either Genesis or Revelations.  
  
That's depending on which side she set the bible on the hot skillet.  
  
The magic of the moment is disrupted by the yelping of the fire alarm, and as Ukyo runs for the extinguisher, the woman flies back away, trying to fan out the flames, I grab my pack and my bread. I bolt out the door.  
  
As I'm running I pass by a clock.  
  
11:47  
  
I'm thirteen minutes from a dramatic, cause and effect non-destiny, and I'm still a woman. I still have one trick up my sleeve though. One fiancé left to play for one cup of hot water. Thirteen minutes. Is somebody timing this?  
  
I get to Shampoo's restaurant and just like at Ukyo's there's a closed sign up on a Sunday morning.  
  
In military terms, this is known as re-grouping. If you pull back for a second, you can think of an new strategy.  
  
How do we get Ranma now?  
  
A peek inside the door, and there's only tables and chairs, no threat. What I hear in the kitchen are Chinese ranting between Shampoo, Cologne and Mouse. Their words pop up and down in tonality so much, you'd think they'd modeled the language after a pinball machine.  
  
Before me, like a holy grail is an ignored kettle of hot water, and some ceramic cups for tea.  
  
I set my bread down, so I don't risk splashing it at all, and I make my lunge for the hot water, but before I could get my mits on it, I see a foot coming though the doorway, and into the diner. I duck below a table.  
  
"Something-Something-Something-RANMA!" Says Shampoo.  
  
"Bla-bla-Shampoo, Bla-Ranma, something-something." says Mouse.  
  
Cologne comes in, she adds whatever the hell she's saying to the mix, and I reach up from under the table to get the hot water kettle. Just as I'm about to, I see Shampoo's feet come around the bar, and turn towards my table. I jink my hand back.  
  
At that moment, I found it strange that I'm hiding from Shampoo, to get the hot water so I can hide the fact that I change from Strangelouvre.  
  
It works better if I think of it as 'regrouping.'  
  
Shampoo takes the kettle, and the cups and walks behind the counter. I check both ways to make sure it's clear, then I zip over to the counter, and press myself as flat as I can against it, like an Egyptian hieroglyph. Behind me I hear my precious hot water being poured into tea-cups. Then they rub it in by drinking it.  
  
I scooch over to one side of the counter, where I hide behind a corner. Suddenly, Shampoo pushes mouse, and he bumps his cup or something, and the hot tea spills over, and pours right where I was hiding before.  
  
That's really rubbing it in.  
  
I guess they start arguing about who has to clean it up, when Cologne sends them both into the kitchen, and she pogo-sticks herself out to a chair in the diner and takes a seat. I'm in the clear.  
  
I hide behind the counter, and assemble a quick plan, I grab the kettle, douse myself, bail out the window, beat Strangelouvre, and then...I have no idea. I haven't got a place to go home to, I haven't got any reason to keep staying in town. All I have is one fight to call my future. It'll all be done in 20 minutes.  
  
After that, I don't know what to do. So, quick as a flash I decide I'll deal with the next 20 minutes, then the next 20 and so on.  
  
This life is too damn big, it's too long, and I don't get to start over, so I'll live the whole thing 20 minutes at a time.  
  
With that out of my head, I start my plan and lunge, silently, for the kettle.  
  
Fuck! That's COLD!  
  
What I had grabbed and used without thinking about it was an ice-water pitcher.  
  
"Looking for this, son-in-law?"  
  
I stand up and look over at the table, where the hag is taunting me with the hot water kettle.  
  
"You'll have to try harder than that to best me, son-in-law."  
  
Gimme the kettle!  
  
She hops, spring loaded, over to the table nearest to me, and points her staff in my face.  
  
"You must renounce Kodachi Kuno."  
  
With plea-  
  
"...AND you must vow to become Shampoo's Groom, for serious, and be her husband for life."  
  
Now hold on a-She presses her staff point into my forehead a bit.  
  
"I don't know why you're in a hurry, my dear boy, but there's no denying it. So, I'll leave it up to your choice. Say yes, and you get the hot water and Shampoo."  
  
I think I've been through this before. Lather, rinse and repeat.  
  
"What will it be my boy?"  
  
Just as I'm about to answer I feel something warm embrace me from behind.  
  
She covers me.  
  
She embraces me.  
  
She makes me the man I was meant to be.  
  
I really could write poems about hot water. I love her that much.  
  
"We now got him, Grandmother! Now Ranma is groom of Shampoo!"  
  
I turn and with my big manly arms, I take her up, sweep her off her feet so fast she drops the empty bucket and her scrub brush. I place her on the counter, and look into her eyes. The weakness and shock in her stare, you'd think she was hypnotized.  
  
Thank you, Shampoo.  
  
Her face lights up, and she leans forward, eyes now closed for a tender kiss. I use the magic of this moment to propel myself over her shoulders. I'm out the door. I bend over, and pick up my bread. looking back in, Mousse is looking the wrong way, Shampoo looks only at me from backside-down on the counter, and I look right back at Cologne and tell her no deal. I have an appointment to keep. As I speed away from the cafe I hear my record for making girls cry go up one more notch.  
  
I needed hot water because I was a girl at the time, I was a girl at the time, for one reason and one reason only.  
  
It was last night. It was late. Late enough to be called early. Too late for anything, and I knocked on Kodachi's window. She was laying so peacefully there, where just the night before she was writhing and sweating and orgasming the night away.  
  
As soon as she looked over at me she jumped out of bed, with intent and malice, and opened the window.  
  
"Of all the people I wanted to say it to, you were at the top of the list, but I get to tell you last."  
  
There's nothing she could have told me that I didn't already know.  
  
"Well did you know about-"  
  
You were doing it in the bath, then the both of you came in here, and did it some more. I know every last detail down to the type of boxers he was wearing, and the music you played.  
  
She started to heave heavily.  
  
There is nothing that he does that I don't know about. He also told you he didn't love you.  
  
She tried to shut the window, but I stopped her.  
  
What he didn't tell you is that he doesn't hate you either.  
  
She stopped trying to shut the window.  
  
He is alone, now. I can't help him, you see. He needs to find someplace and someone, and to be honest it seems that anyplace and anyone would be better than nowhere and no one and nothing.  
  
"What's your point?"  
  
He sent me here, because he is willing to be with you on one condition and one condition only.  
  
"Which is?"  
  
If you want to accept him, you have to accept me. There is no way around it. Were bound to each other in a way I don't think I could ever explain to you. All you need to understand is that if you love him you'll love me too. Hating me is the same as hating him. So I assure you, take me into this house, and you'll have him by your side. Reject me, and I assure you he will not be able to love you.  
  
Please Kodachi.  
  
Know me, and know that you know me.  
  
Someone.  
  
Her hands reached from the window-panes to my shoulders. I looked up, and she went for my throat.  
  
"You come here, for what? Did you come here to humiliate me? To torment me? You think you can just expect me to believe you and Ranma will never be parted? I don't believe it, and I won't believe it! Not now, not ever!"  
  
She leaned out the window, and pushed me back. I peered upward, and there was Kodachi, and high above her looming tempests of clouds stir over the light of the city. She let me go and I slid down the tiles of the roof, only to catch myself at the ledge.  
  
"Mark my words, as far as I'm concerned you are not welcome here, look at this home and see the perfect home I live in, and know you can never stay. I will admit one and one only to be with me."  
  
Kodachi, I am-  
  
"Because you came to tell me he does not hate me I'll forgive you enough to say that I don't hate you either, I just will not be able to tolerate you, even for his sake. So, in closing I'll say this. Send me Ranma and then be gone for good. There's no place for you in my life."  
  
She shut her window, and closed the drapes. I got off the roof, and went to the only place I knew I had to be, in the park.  
  
Akane, Ukyo, Kodachi, Shampoo it's sad but there are so many girls who have cried on my account. Sadder still, as of last night, I'm one of them.  
  
I'm back. I'm a guy. I'm not crying. I'm standing in an open patch of grass, near where I'd fought him the first time. The sky looms so dark; it feels like the whole town is just a part of its shadow. The pond next to me is the same empty color as the sky, and the leaves and grass are sunken from usual bright green to army-grade olive. It's 11:59 and the clock ticks over.  
  
High noon, and Dr. Strangelouvre walks out on a trail from behind a set of tall hedges near the pond. He has a long baguette in one hand, and a long black bag shoulder-strapped across his back. He faces me from the other side of the knoll, and his hair is sunken brown under the cloud.  
  
"I zee you heve zee foarsyte to breeng yourselfs' owen bread. Haw veree inconviniance et ees for moi."  
  
And why's that?  
  
"I am such zee nica-guy, yeau zee, I breeng you yoaur won loaf of bread."  
  
He points to the black back he has strapped on.  
  
"Now zat yeau weel naught be needing eet, I weel heve to hoald eet to my self. No good, oui?"  
  
Whatever. Let's get this over with.  
  
"Ranma!"  
  
Shit. That's Ryoga. I forgot the rite of passage murder thing he was going to inflict.  
  
"Oooo, quait zee popular fealow, non?"  
  
Forget about him. We came here to fight, and that's what I intend to do. Make your move.  
  
"Befoar we do, I heve a condition ovar zee wagear of ziz duel."  
  
"Ranma-darling."  
  
Oh, fuck. Now Kodachi is on her way. Wager? Over what? Her?  
  
"Non-non-non. Thesis about Akane Tendo."  
  
Akane? What about her?  
  
His tone goes low, and he focuses on saying every word, to get them right.  
  
"You, and - her are - Never to be. Under stand?"  
  
What does he mean?  
  
"Akane is my masterpiece."  
  
His what?  
  
"Akane is perfect, she is flawless. I performed a McIndoe operation using a fresh placenta, the first time I had ever used placenta. I applied the membrane inside her better than I had ever thought possible. I trimmed and applied the amnion seamlessly, and it fit like paint on a canvas. I seamed the entire vagina with perfection. Even weeks after, there was no rejection, there was no involution. There was no splitting or tearing, or re-sealing throughout the entire passage. After two months, a new purely vaginal epithelium was growing within her, which was textbook perfect, with ideal normal flora, and no infection of any kind. Do you see now?"  
  
My eyes widened.  
  
What...the fuck...are you on about?  
  
He stomps his foot.  
  
"Zis is whay I cannot tallerete you any longar! I weel tell you plain-lee. I made zat vagaina of hears, and I made zee baist zee world hez EVAR known!"  
  
Every eye in the park just darted in our direction.  
  
"Ze veary thought of you tainteeng eet wiz yoar foal seed breengs moi to Nausia! Shee iz PAIRFEECT and it is I who am teu zank foar eet. Yeau knau nozing of it, yeau zink she is joust anozer girel, now zat I heve change-ed her. Non, mon amis, she ees my Mona-Lisa, my Eiffel Tower, my walkeng parfection! She and otherz like haer is my reason for beeing. How culd you undarstand zis? Non! Thous: foar her, foar my art and foar what yeau have done to ze Maddame Kodachi, You weel naut be forgiveen!"  
  
He knows about Kodachi and me? He smiles.  
  
"I know zat her eyes ware meaninglessly cast in yoar direction. I know zat after zis day, she weel become myne, and yeau weel be gone from haer."  
  
But what else does he know?  
  
"Zere is nozing else to know, zat would concearn me."  
  
Is that a fact?  
  
"Zat she's fact."  
  
Fine then, Strangelouvre. I say. I say I'll accept these terms, I say I won't accept them for him, or for Kodachi, or even for myself. I'll accept that if I lose I'll never see Kodachi, or Akane ever agian. I owe Akane that, and even though I can't ever say much good about her I'll say that she is worth fighting for.  
  
"Zen let us begeen."  
  
With Kodachi and Ryoga somewhere scanning the park, we square off and I look at Dr. Strangelouvre right in the eye. It's at this moment I think I understand him. He's the world's most powerful kind of doctor, and at the same time, he's the best there is. What he did for Akane no one else in the world could have done. He made her into what she wanted to be. He made her into a woman. Having touched the material in question, I assure you, he nailed it.  
  
Even though she was born with testis, Strangelouvre stepped up and in his eyes, he worked a miracle.  
  
In his mind it's like he turned water to wine.  
  
Dr. Stranglouvre is powerful; he does what he pleases with women because he is the foremost expert on them. Any man who thinks they know more about women than he does is a threat to him, and that's where I fit. He never learned about my female half, but just that I had one made me a threat, that I think he could perceive. There was something I knew about women that makes me an expert on the subject. I'm sure he couldn't put his finger on it, but it was there.  
  
Cause and effect, muscle in on a guy's turf, and he'll muscle you out, best he can.  
  
When it comes to women, in his mind, I want who he's made, and he wants who I have.  
  
Cause and effect, one way or another, love hurts.  
  
This is Dr. Stranglouvre, who in less than a month toppled everything in my life, and left me with a battle where I don't even have anything left to fight for.  
  
But I do have the fight. That will have to be enough.  
  
For a brief moment, faster than an electrical spark, with me surrounded on three sides by people hunting for me, I just happened to think it.  
  
I miss Akane. I really do.  
  
I felt the first drop of rain hit my shirt.  
  
Oh, my 


	13. Ranma on 'How I learned to relate to wom...

The ultimate cause ------------------  
  
I have to end this sometime.  
  
My first thought was Rain.  
  
After that it was just flurry and fury.  
  
With droplets beginning to patter around us in the park, I ran full-on into Dr. Strangelouvre, and winged my bread through the air with my left hand. He put his up and guarded his head with a quick block. He re-set to jab me straight on with his loaf, but I twisted my momentum off my first swing, and went for a reverse roundhouse kick to his face. He backs off, and goes back into a defensive pose.  
  
My plan was to have him knocked out by now. He's better than I had thought.  
  
"Veree spry, Mon amis. Howevar, Zee chance of raen has altaered my plans. Now, try teau keep up."  
  
He turns and starts to run toward the entrance of the park. The rain drops are now coming on in a light shower. A few driplets here and there won't change me, but sooner or later the curse will hit it's limit. I run after Strangelouvre.  
  
Come back here, fight fair! There's not much time, I have to end this now, before My terrible secret is revealed.  
  
He jinks left out of the park, and I follow. From behind me I hear her.  
  
"Ranma-darling! Where are you going!?"  
  
Now Kodachi is after me. I'm keeping pace with the good doctor, who's sprinting out with his face arched forward, and his aerodynamic French cheekbones cutting through the moist air. From behind me is the bounding Black Rose. She hops gymnastic on top of signs and post-boxes, with her dark streamer a missile's exhaust trailing and following her movement perfectly.  
  
He breaks right.  
I break right.  
Kodachi breaks right.  
  
Up ahead, with his umbrella already up, and with his psychologist at his side, Ryoga looks our way.  
  
"Comeeng Sreau!"  
  
Hibiki jinks to one side as Stragelouvre, Me then Kodachi rifle through as almost one simultaneous gust.  
  
"Ranma! Get back here!"  
  
Oh, shit. I just realized where this is going. He's heading to Furinkan.  
  
He breaks left, and the parade of us follow suit like a string of pearls.  
  
School's out for summer, and what better arena to weild the bread of wrath than the wide fields of Furinkan? He's just getting personal now. I feel the whip of Kodachi's ribbon try to latch on to my heel. It comes across my shoe dog's tongue wide with a loud FWAP sound.  
  
"Wait for me dearest!"  
  
And I'm saying-NO!  
  
Ryoga whips out his umbrella, and takes a risk in the rain to chuck it at me.  
  
"Fight me like a man, Ranma! Get back here"  
  
I turn and smack the canopy back at him with an upward kick and I'm saying-NO! Quick as I can, I'm turned again, and sprinting back for the vanishing Frenchman. He turns down a path that arches semicircle through the neighborhood. I have to lose the three behind me, so I short-cut with a left-side jump over a stone wall, into a yard. I hear scuffling stutter-steps behind me, and know that they couldn't all turn at the same time. I change course to shortcut through alleys and yards and I'm running all out leaping over rock gardens and fences. Ducking under trees and porch coverings. The rain pitter-patters little random snare drums from all directions on leaves and roof-tops, and I know I have to meet Strangelouvre at the pass up ahead. I have to meet him and beat him before the rain comes down in big drop pellet-shot that will soak everything.  
  
The ground. The trees. The bread. Me.  
  
As I'm running my feet kick up less dirt. My soles lose a bit more and more of their grip. I hop over a pointed-tip metal fence that doesn't skewer me, or tear off corners of my clothing. I zip past a car that doesn't back up and crush my head. Hugging tight to the side of buildings with trickles of dangerous water on front of me, I strafed my way through an alley. I'm charging through someone's back yard, and my foot catches a stone and I'm fumbling for a goldfish pond. My steps stuttering and skewed sideways, I take my chance on leaping over it, only to crash and tumble on the other side rolling corkscrew and landing my back on the cut wooden edge of a porch. I come to my feet wincing and bow curved backward to the pain, and still I'm running. Up over one, two, three fences and I come out on the other side, where my shoes hit concrete, and I'm under a tree that grows curb-side. I can hear the jogging footsteps coming around the bend and I duck behind the tree. Looking down this avenue I can see the walls of Furinkan, past the layers upon layers of now sheeting rain. Then I hear him.  
  
"Un-deux-un-deux-un-deux-un-duex."  
  
His voice reaches its closest and I swipe out from behind the tree, wide and strong. Stranglouvre takes the blow just to the high side of his right kidney, as he tries to jump back to avoid it. He leans over, wincing and he's wide open. I swipe high-low directly onto his crown, and he brings his bread up for a block. The impact is damp on his bread with a kind of soft critical weakness to it.  
  
Think wet noodles. Think soggy cereal. Think his number is up.  
  
While I was running sheltered under trees and porches he was drenching his bread through the rainy streets, and now it's over. I hit his wrist, and Strangelouve's bread impacts against the wall with a long splatter-mark, and drops wet and dead on the sidewalk. He, in the meantime, slips and lands butt down on the concrete. The sun is hidden, so the outlook is dark enough that his lenses are clear and I can see the weak, fading light of defeat dawn in his eyes. This is it. This is the final blow. Fight mechanism and all its glory. The pumping adrenaline, pounding heart, tense muscles, feeling totally charged. I rise my bread up, and I'm about to swing down and drive one right across his jaw, when my bread snags. Over the fence, hanging tree sloth from the tree limb, Kodachi has just wrapped her ribbon around my bread, and she stops me.  
  
Sonnovabitch-she stops me.  
  
"Wait my dear, I want to be with you when you best him!"  
  
What the hell is she doing?  
  
Strangelouvre swipes up his foot at my wrist and my baguette grounds out, unravels from the ribbon and tumbles end over end into the open street. Turning over and over through more and more sheets of rain. In the road, it rolls into a puddle at the opening of a storm-drain.  
  
And I'm saying-No!  
  
"Zat, she waus closue!"  
  
I bundle my fist, crouch down and get ready to pound his glasses into his eye sockets, and with just a finger, not even waving it at all just the one extended finger, he stops me.  
  
"ah-ah-ah, Mon amis." poking my nose. "You must uuse zee bread, remembair? Yeast foar bread, yeast foar battle."  
  
I look him square in the glasses. Yeast infection!  
  
He smirks. "EEf you weesh teu insult moi by drageeing my carreer into zis, zen I have onlee one zing to say. Een my professional opinion, yeau are a fucking pussy."  
  
To his right he grabs his bread, extends his battle aura, and back-hands me with the long brunt of it. It felt much firmer than a moment ago. Two-by-four firmer. I slap face-down on the pavement, and pop back up onto my hands and knees. Strangelouvre is up to his feet.  
  
He spits on the ground in front of me, then turns and sprints full-out for Furinkan.  
  
"Wait!" Kodachi says and "Wait for me darling." across the street my bread leers to one side as the storm drain starts to flow heavy. The rain is pattering down full-force. and even under this tree droplets are falling through. Dampening and pattering all around me. Trickles of streams start flowing past my feet on the concrete.  
  
Even staying under this tree won't stop this cause of rain. Nothing I can do can stop the effect that's going to overtake me. Behind me Kodachi slips and comes tumbling down into the yard behind the fence. She's probably lying face up when she calls to me.  
  
"Loving you is such blissful agony my dear."  
  
Talking like maybe, just maybe, we are the only two in the neighborhood who can hear this.  
  
"I would have you have me once more before you bring this to an end. Please come to me darling!"  
  
I step out from under the tree. Mercilessly the droplets pelt at my head and face. I can feel my chest go heavy when my breasts appear. The sturdy inverted-triangular sensation of abdominal muscles widening from the base to support my chest, these supports relax, bend to the sides, and form curves on either side of my supple belly.  
  
"Please take me again, my dearest sweet beloved Ranma! Entice me. Fill me. Ravage me."  
  
My hair flashes over soft and red, and my legs revert from massive and muscular to slender and smooth.  
  
I am become woman. Hear my thunderous roar.  
  
And I'm saying-NO!  
  
"Ranma?"  
  
No!  
  
I run for my bread, and fish it out of the drain. I'm turned, and headed toward Furinkan with the sound of wind gusting by my ears, and the pelting of raindrops on my face, breast-curved shirt and short-striding legs. Try to imagine what feels like 10 gallons a minute gushing down on you face first, soaking your disgusting, soggy bread. Your clothes start sticking to every damp part of you, and they flap leaden heavy and dripping against your arms and knees.  
  
This is a cloud burst. Think of it like cutting out the bottom of a gigantic cloud with a huge bowie knife, and dumping every drop in about five minutes. I'm running in this and I can feel the damp weakness of my bread that reminds me of a bunched up swimsuit, or soaking wet towel. I get to Furinkan, and I'm hopped up on the wall of the school. I look down the path and Strangelouve is a dark silhouette in the brutal downpour that just started to get real heavy a few moments ago. He's standing at the door. In the alcove of the school entrance. Directly under the cube-looking clock-tower. And hugging his back against the door to get out of the rain.  
  
His bread is soaked.  
  
My bread is soaked.  
  
But he's a guy, and I am not.  
  
Envious?  
  
You bet I am.  
  
I'm standing there in the rain waiting for him to make his move.  
  
He he does nothing, blurred and dark by the constant downward dumping of water. He won't dare take his bread out into the rain, that just got a little bit lighter. Dimmer-style the rain starts to soften. Cloudbursts happen this fast. The streams of rain become weaker and weaker around me. Stranglouvre's form brightens but he's still not moving. From what seems like out of nowhere the clouds peel back, and the sun blasts brilliant and dominating through. The gray way of the world is replaced by overpowering white. His eyes hidden behind the blacked lenses. He steps forward, with the midday sun pure and dominant, and he is laughing.  
  
His hair beams out golden, and he laughs at me.  
  
I have to fight him with this tits and ass body of mine, now.  
  
He tosses away his bread, and the bread lands, breaks into three messy pieces with little soaking croutons spraying off to either side.  
  
Now's my chance. Wait. Oh, no.  
  
With a smooth motion he reaches behind and un-zips his long backpack. He stalking towards me now. Reaching inside he takes out the loaf of bread. The one he said he was going to give me. Now he plans to give it to me. The hard way, of course. Nothing I can do about it from here. It's in his hands.  
  
Happily laughing his ass off.  
  
"So, ziz is yaur treu form, Ranma!"  
  
Shut up and fight me you-wait a second.  
  
Hold on.  
  
What is that supposed to mean?  
  
"Ziz maust be zee female form I heve hear-ed so mouch of!"  
  
He knew? What? No! How long has he? Dammit! It's a Bluff! How could he have known? Where? Wait. Woah. Give me a second here.  
  
He knew?  
  
"Auf coase I knew! I've knowen zee whoel time."  
  
Wait-  
  
but-  
  
when-  
  
no, I mean-.  
  
Wait. I get it. Akane!  
  
Akane. Akane. Akane.  
  
Holy fucking shit.  
  
"Oui, mon amis, az wiz most women, yeau openz zee one end, zee ozer weel open as well."  
  
Thats disgusting.  
  
Then I remember. The Friday night. The almost-sex. The confession. The slab of tissue, and the extension surgery.  
  
Yeah, that's disgusting. It's also true.  
  
So Akane's sitting there in the good doctors room, and He starts his exam and he's all like.  
  
'Howw Doo youu feeel?'  
  
And she tells him about her fiancé that she hates. Her fiancé who she has to live with, and deal with day in and day out. Strangelouvre looks inside on his Mona Lisa, His Eiffel tower and he says-  
  
'Taalk aabout thaat.'  
  
She'd be Talking fast, like it will make the exam go by quicker, or make him stop the interrogation. Tell him what he wants to hear, and maybe he'd pull the stainless steel clamps out of your vagina. And she's gotta be like; he's a pervert. He's a cheater. He fights dirty. He's a jerk. He changes sex with cold water.  
  
And Strangelouvre is poking her clit saying.  
  
'Howw diid thaat maake yoou feeel?'  
  
And she tells him and he knows. Now he knows everything.  
  
He's known all along. And he laughs.  
  
Ranma darling?  
Ranma darling?  
  
"Whan she find yeau, eet iz all over! She weel leave you and become ritefulee what ees myne!"  
  
He seems intent on finishing what he started, so he holds his bread in the middle with his right hand, and extends his arm out forward to hold it level in a striking position.  
  
Dr. Strangelouvre calls to me, he says "Aer yeeu Ready, Monseur?"  
  
My bread drips, soaking from the rain and the street and the gutter. A sponge would be preferable.  
  
Cause and effect.  
  
I look back at him.  
  
"I got to start this sometime."  
  
I twist a bit on my heel on the damp concrete of the Furinkan path. I put my bread out sideways, samurai sword, and with a grit in my teeth, then a sudden, girly scream, I charge Dr. Strangelouvre.  
  
My pace is fast full out sprint at first, with a rumble of stomps going straight for him. Then I hear a voice behind me.  
  
"Ranma dar-What!?"  
  
My pace slows, to about jogging.  
  
"The Pig-tailed girl!"  
  
Now it's a rushed walk.  
  
"What are you doing here? Where is he?"  
  
Now I'm just regular walking, and I come to a total stop in front of Strangelouvre. I look over my shoulder at her. She's wearing her gymnast outfit which is darkened from it's usual light green to a damper maple-leaf shade. Her wet, gumdrop nipples try to point outward through her workout suit like a spider's fangs.  
  
"Answer me!" she says  
  
With a smirk, I turn back to Dr. Strangelouvre.  
  
"I fucked her."  
  
"Yeau WHAAT!?"  
  
I say, "I had sex with Koda-"  
  
And I stop suddenly to look at my bread. I know. I know it's sick and it's unhealthy, and you probably don't want to hear it, but please. No breakfast. No dinner. No lunch. I've not eaten for a whole day, and I'm totally starving.  
  
I sit flat on my ass and I shove the first heaping mouthful of soggy, mushy french bread into my face. Strangelouve steps backward, disgusted.  
  
"Yeau aer Lyeeng!"  
  
The soaking bread dribbles rainwater down my chin, as the first soggy mouthful makes it's way down my gullet, and I'm already taking my next big bite. Even week-long stale, it's soft and compressible and It sprays damp in my face like a fresh cut watermelon. I swallow again.  
  
"We lost our virginity together night before last. Five rounds. She's fuckin' amazing."  
  
Too bad she's crazy.  
  
"Kodachi, est-il vrai vous a-t-il eu le sexe avec Ranma!?"  
  
I'm almost halfway down the loaf at this point. I'm too hungry to be nauseous. Too hungry to care that Kodachi is coming my way now as well. If eating out of streetwater and storm-drains can't get to me, what can?  
  
"Oui, it's rectifient, docteur. But I did not intend for this bitch to be the one to inform you."  
  
Up and over and beyond her, I hear Ryoga's voice.  
  
"There you are! I found him, Dr. Noitaru!"  
  
Now I've got three out of four feet of this bread eaten, and I'm not stopping until I get the last bit. I look at the ground around me, and on all 4 sides are feet and shadows. Kodachi's gymnast slippers behind me. Dr. Noitaru's Black-top Nike's and Ryogas weather-beaten wandering shoes to my right and left, and Dr. Stranglouve's tan-rubber soled oxfords still ahead of me. With my hands soaking wet, I press the last inch of the mush into my mouth, and I keel backward and lay on the ground looking up at the noon-day sun that flashes bright blue in my eyes. I swallow hard.  
  
The dark silloutes of Ryoga tossing a stone up and down, of Kodachi's trailing ribbon that lay by my face, Dr. Noitaru's pen and post-it pad, and Dr. Strangelouvre with his long loaf of French bread hang over me like forest trees, with the sun beaming down and through cutting every blackened edge.  
  
"Do your worst, then, guys. If this is how it ends, fine."  
  
No martial arts.  
No fianc's.  
No forgiveness.  
  
Dr. Strangelouvre puts the shadow of his bread over my eyes so I can see, and he looks at me with the shadow of his glasses over his eyes. I see something flipping through the sky, arching high. It gets behind Strangelouvre's bread. Then I can see it coming down faster and faster at me.  
  
"Adieu."  
  
Impossible.  
  
I raise my hand up, just as Stragelouvre cocks his whole arm upward with his battle aura rising in the bread. Bigger and bigger, this flipping object falls at me. The 4 people around me realize that I'm seeing something, and they look up just in time to watch the spinning blur right past them, and land in my hand, ala lady of the lake.  
  
French bread.  
  
I smile.  
  
With a fast, powerful counter-clockwise spin, and my battle-aura blasting out I roundhouse the entire group, and they are fanned out, and skid to their backs in the fresh Furinkan mud. I'm up to my feet, and I look over at where the bread came flipping over from.  
  
This is impossible.  
  
The Flashing blue sun still in my eyes. Seeing what can't be there. Seeing who can't be here.  
  
Cause and Effect.  
  
Nothing can happen for no reason. It's impossible.  
  
Everything that I have done is the exact opposite of what I did to deserve this.  
  
Sneaking around, calling names, betrayal, hitting, cheating, cuck-holding. This can't be real. This can't be happening.  
  
Her form beams out from the flashing blue of the sun that I was staring at.  
  
Cause and effect. It's the way the world works.  
  
"What are you doing here?" I scream.  
  
She doesn't say a word, standing there on the turf of the school, in the corner her umbrella laid down. She looks over to my left. I look over to my left. Dr. Stranglouvre comes out at me overhand with a mighty bread-stroke. Too fast for me to get my bread up.  
  
What I've gotten the ugliest bread I've ever seen. What isn't burned to a crisp is uneven. the normal French bread look of two perfectly rounded edges are not present here. One end is snubbed square, like a flat-head screwdriver, the other comes to a dulled point. The trademark parallel slits on the top of the bread which open during baking, to give French bread it's beautiful presentation, the first two on this bread are sealed tight in, and bloated on either side. The third, toward the pointed side of the bread is a bulged open eyeball, charred black on the outside, and light brown on the inside. The fourth is angled in the middle pointing at the dull-dagger tip, like a little smiley face against the bread's side.  
  
Stranglouve makes contact across my shoulder. I get slammed down, almost to my knees, but I spring up, and slap the breads flat side across his cheek. His face goes back a little blackened from the charred bottom of the bread, that no doubt, had to be scraped off the pan, just before the pan had to be tossed. He makes a second lunge, but before he could contact, I pulled off a quick reverse summersault, and landed only to hop forward, and downward swipe from the air. He blocks and the two bread loaves collide with a deep, gut-thumping thud.  
  
Something latches onto my heel. It's Kodachi's ribbon. Her now dark ,damp and muddy leotard looks like camouflage and it's vacuum-packed tight on her body. with a quick whipping motion she latches onto my wrist. We're head to head, ear to ear. Now she starts that threatening whisper  
  
"One side, Bitch! I'll not have you fighting my darling's fight for him!" She yells.  
  
Strangelouve takes another swipe at me so i twirl in. He keeps coming and I wrap myself in Kodachi's ribbon until I'm right next to her. Stragelouve takes another swing, and I block with the ribbon, before wrapping it around his bread one. two. Three times.  
  
"What makes you think he's yours to fight for?" I ask her. I'm close enough to smell her conditioner.  
  
"Since we made love, of course! Do you really think he can take that back?"  
  
With the slack of the ribbon she wraps around the front of my neck, and applies pressure. My windpipe clamps up. Strangelouve in the meantime, points his bread tip at my face, and I grab on to the ribbon wrapped about his bread and push the loaf hard away from anywhere near my face. Strangelouvre pulls back, and I grab the leashing of the ribbon tight. He lunges again, and I whip the ribbon to my right side and the whole of his swing misses me. Kodachi tightens the ribbon on my throat. I think of it like one long cloth connecting and wrapped around bunch of problems. A metaphor for something.  
  
"Tell me where he is. Where is Ranma?"  
  
Strangelouve unravels the ribbon from his bread. Kodachi loosens the ribbon around my throat enough for me to tell her.  
  
I say, "I'm sick of telling you where Ranma is. If you don't know now, I never want you to know."  
  
Strangelouvre cocks the bread straight on for another lunge, and flies forward, just as Kodachi ranks on the ribbon so hard that it rope burns across my neck, seals up my windpipe and jerks my head to the side. Just enough to the side. Strangelouvre's bread zings by me and, wham, hits Kodachi straight on. We both tumble backwards in the turf and mud, and the ribbon comes undone as I take a few more rolls.  
  
"Non! Maddame Kodachi!" He rushes to her side, and props her up on his left knee.  
  
"Ranma!" from across the school yard Ryoga comes running. He's got those stones in his hand, and wants to breaking-point-blank my face again. I steady my bread to him.  
  
"I aem so Sorrey, mi amor, I deed not mean foar yeau to be haert! Forgeeve me!"  
  
Weakly, and with a big red-blotch smack dab on her forehead she speaks up.  
  
"Will you stop speaking with that God-dammed accent already?"  
  
Strangelouve snaps his head back fast. "What? But I thought you thought it was sexy!"  
  
For a second, I completely forget about Ryoga's rite of passage murder Ranma thing.  
  
"Well, you thought I thought wrong." Kodachi says, "You're not impressing anybody."  
Ryoga tosses one of the stones up, and I bat it away with my skanky bread before he can blast it. He lunges a high-kick, and I lean back, his heel halting mere millimeters far from my face.  
  
"Come on." I hear Dr. Strangelouve say "The accent suits me doesn't it?"  
  
"Of course not." I head Kodachi reply weakly "You're not even French."  
  
What!?  
  
I scream "What!?"  
  
Ryoga launches left and right jabs at me, and I'm fending them back with my bread. Now I see Dr. Noitaru is also coming my way.  
  
"You knew?" Dr. Strangelouvre asks.  
  
"I've known all along."  
  
Dr. Noitaru jinks to one side, and jabs his pen into the back base of my skull, for his seratonin point attack. For a moment, everything feels so nice.  
  
"But I do speak French fluently, after all."  
  
"So does most everyone in Quebec."  
  
Ryoga comes at me. Noitaru backs off and starts to write on his post-it.  
  
Head butt. High-kick.  
  
Breaking-point. Bread-fuu-block.  
  
Elbow-lunge. Headlock.  
  
He back-hands my cheek, then tosses me over his hips. I'm on my feet, turned back at him. Beaten and bruised in more than one place, but feeling superb.  
  
With the neuronal happy-sauce now flowing in my veins, I hardly feel a thing. If my expression moved any more, it could be called a smile.  
  
This can't be real. This can't be going on. This can't be happening.  
  
If something happens that can't be explained by cause and effect, wouldn't that mean that anything is possible?  
  
I can hear Dr. Noitatu charging at me from behind.  
  
I don't know, but from what I have just seen. Not from anything else, just this one moment, right here right now, there may be something bigger than just cause and effect in this world. If there is, then what could we even call a boundary anymore? Beyond cause and effect there are worlds of possibilities.  
  
"Diagnosis strike!"  
  
I'm not looking at her when I use the bread she gave me to push away Ryoga's extended finger, pushing a jagged rock. I'm not looking at her when the shove pushes the rock-finger breaking-point right into Noitaru's unsuspecting hand.  
  
Just before the rock blows up. before it shreds Noitaru's little 'diagnosis.' I have just moment of a second to see what he was going to brand me.  
  
Second-rate.  
  
Yeah, right. Bite me.  
  
The rock shatters, and blows the post it pad into Noitaru's palm and his fingers become a blast-back opeining dandelion shrouded in exploding dust and debirs. Boom. Struck him with such force that he overturned and collapsed.  
  
"OOOW! Mutherfucker! My Fucking hand!"  
  
That smell. I can't put my finger on it, but I'm not too pleased with it. It's the same smell from two days ago. This bread stinks. A stale, odd aroma that you can't distinguish, nor can you forget it, like smelling a box of crayons or play-dough.  
  
"Dr. Noitaru! Are you alright?" Ryoga rushes to his side.  
  
"No, idiot! How am I supposed to get back into grad school with a busted writing hand!?"  
  
The hell?  
  
"Grad school?" I say "Are you saying you haven't even graduated from psych-school yet?"  
  
He cringes in, trying to make it look like he was just nursing his wounded hand.  
  
"It's not my fault. That dirty bitch, Dr. Paula Nicholson caught me cheating. Once. Just once."  
  
Ryoga's eyes go wide with shock.  
  
"Dr. Noitaru, you aren't even a doctor!?"  
  
I look at Ryoga.  
  
Gomez Noitaru is not a doctor. Dr. Strangelouvre isn't French. I know I don't know either of these clowns.  
  
I say, "How does that make you feel?"  
  
Ryoga looks at his feet, still trying to cope with what just happened.  
  
"OK, look the truth is, I'm a gifted ahead-of-my-time former freshman from a prestigious school for psychological sciences." Gomez Noitaru, med-school dropout says "I wanted to enhance my martial-arts ability to impress the dean of admissions enough to forgive me. That's where you fit in, Ryoga."  
  
Ryoga looks up in what could be confused astonishment, or unfathomable rage.  
  
"You were using me?"  
  
"No! No that was not my intent. I only wanted to help you, Ryoga. I gave you the best advice I had regarding your numerous emotional problems and I-hrrrk."  
  
Ryoga has him by the throat with his left hand, and doesn't even cock his fist back but goes straight in one motion with his right, low-high uppercut that lofts Gomez airborne to land backside-down on the wall of the school, where he flops over, with his legs flung above him, and disappearing landing with a thud that is barely audible from this side of the fence. Ryoga drops his hands down, hanging, swaying, drained. Behind me Strangelouvre is still talking to Kodachi, who sounds really out of it.  
  
"Madame Kodachi, please understand, that my hopes have centered around you since I came here. Please say that you understand. Please."  
  
"So it was all a lie to begin with." Ryoga mutters.  
  
The rite of passage. The fear-complex. How bright the landscape, how dark the outlook. I smile. Ok, half smile.  
  
"I have never felt more humiliated in my entire life. Everything I fight for turns into a lie. Every fight I choose is just another defeat waiting for me to submit to. God, I hate this." I can see a white aura generating around him. Shit.  
  
Before I can even think to do anything, he's turned to face me. His white aura flushes into the palm of his open right hand and blasts fourth, with him screaming 'Shishi-Hokodan!'  
  
The blast of his aura closing in, I react in French-bread-fuu mode, and swing at the blast with my bread. The blast hits my bread with such force that the whole loaf recoils and whacks on top of my forehead. The fireball returns to sender, square in the face and Ryoga is sent skyward. Tumbling, hurtling out of the arena, as I'm skidded to my back in the mud. Looking up, under two trees. Under Two bird-feeders. Two carved hearts that both read A.F. X J.J. forever. Seeing double.  
  
"Docteur Stranglouvre," Kodachi says "Je ne vous aimerai jamais."  
  
I blink a few times until everything looks like one thing blurred next to itself.  
  
"RANMA!"  
  
No time. Dr. Strangelouvre is coming for me. I get to my feet just in time to get smacked across the face. The next blow of bread hits my jaw which bashes up against my top teeth so fast I feel the impact at the crown of my skull. I taste blood. I feel the bread hit hard into my chest, and my breathing halts, winded. Desperate, I guess at his next swing, and block it with my bread. I swing at his belly. He backs off long enough for me to start gasping again.  
  
"AI HATE YEAU! AI HATE YEAU! I HATE YOU!"  
  
Quivvering at the knees. I say to him "Hate me? But you don't even know me!"  
  
"Shut up!" He swings, rights lefts into me, and I've got just enough left in me to fend these blows, side to side like a windshield wiper, cutting every blow off before it can smack into me. Even though this is bending my elbows in every time.  
  
"You don't know Akane either!"  
  
"The hell I don't!"  
  
I lunge forward and break through his attack with my shoulder against his chest. Tumbling to his back he throws me to one side, and I roll to my feet and knees, looking back at him.  
  
"If you really knew Akane, you'd know, she is the worst cook in the whole damn world!" I get to my feet. "You'd know that if she EVER tried to cook french bread, it would be ugly, smelly, burned and inedible," and I hold up my bread "And as hard as fucking iron!"  
  
He charges his last, and in a moment so blissful and fast, I could only compare it to nailing the black rose, I swept into him. His store-bought, soft, delicious bread met the face of the horrible, reeking, ugly charred monster that Akane had spawned from her unholy cookery and was torn completely asunder. Right through the loaf Akane's bread baseball-batted Dr. Strangelouvre, and drove him back, skidding on his oxfords. Clenching his gut. He looks up fast enough to see it coming, and I slam him across his cheek and shoulder, and he fell. And he rolled. His blacked glasses broken, and sent somewhere into the yard. And when he looked up, he saw Akane towering high above her dress.  
  
"Holy fuckeeng Sheet!"  
  
He erks his head up to see me, in the same pose, panting and tingling from smashing him through his own bread and aura. Then he rests his head back down again, looking up.  
  
Hello, Miss Akane."  
  
"Good afternoon, Dr. Strangelouvre."  
  
Gasping, I take a seat where I am in the turf and mud.  
  
"He's a bit tougher than you let on."  
  
Akane shakes her head.  
  
"I'll underestimate him, every now and then."  
  
"Oh, well." He sighs. "I am afraid that this may be goodbye. Before then, just one favor."  
  
"Hmmm?"  
  
"Are you wearing panties?"  
  
"WHAT!" I scream, I jerk up. And a headrush combined with possible concussions leers me off balance.  
  
My biological level saying easy on the accelerator. Stay down for this one. Give it time.  
  
Hell no.  
  
"No, I'm not." Akane says.  
  
I can see Strangelouvre smile.  
  
"Lucky me."  
  
"Strangelouvre, you bastard!" I'm screaming. "Get the hell out of here. You lost!"  
  
"Stay out of this, Ranma." Akane says as I'm staggering.  
  
"But-"  
  
"Shut up!"  
  
Dr. Strangelouvre looks up from the ground. He reaches for the hem of Akane's skirt.  
  
"My masterpiece. The finest ever done, just one more look."  
  
His hand is at the linen hem.  
  
"Stop him Akane!"  
  
"One more look at my greatest achievement...Please."  
  
His thumb caresses the material of the inside of her skirt. He won't tug. He won't lift. The skirt hasn't moved. And he lays there, in broad daylight, on a Sunday. Anybody could walk by the gate, and see this. Not to mention that the good doctor is executing this little debauchery in front of her fiancé. Not that it's really my business, but, dammit. She can't let him do that.  
  
"Go ahead, Dr. Strangelouvre. One more time."  
  
He smiles and pulls back the hem. My eyes are closed, and I turn away.  
  
"There it is," Dr. Stranglouvre says. "You never said thank you Akane, but then that is perhaps too much to ask. Your blight is my blessing. I hope that someday you can understand the wonderful gift you have with you know. Someday you will understand me."  
  
"I already do." Akane says. Then I hear a deep guttural grunt come from Strangelouvre. I look over and Akane is with her right foot stomping, stomping, stomping on Dr. S.' chest again and again. Little reverse "Adidas" insignias pounded on his shirt.  
  
"God-dammed. Fucking! PERVERT!"  
  
With one final slam Dr. Strangelouvre's hand goes limp, flaps out from under Akane's dress, plops down on the sidewalk. Akane walks over to me. I look away, again.  
  
"Dammit! Where did you come from? I never asked for this you know."  
  
"If I hadn't been here, you'd have lost."  
  
"So what?" I say. "That's not the point! That's not what I meant! How could you come here, after all that. All the shit that's happened, and you came here. Dammit! Dammit!"  
  
"Don't be angry because you needed me."  
  
I look her in her blank cold eyes, And I say "Shut up! Just shut up and- and-"  
  
Go away. stay. Find someone else. Don't leave me. Work it out. Break this off. Don't bug me. Don't pity me. Freak of nature. Built like a stone. Angry. Stupid. Uncute bitch. Innocent demonic holy whore. You're the plague and the remedy. But not the death or the cure. And you're here again.  
  
"-and how were you here?"  
  
"I've been here all night."  
  
"What?"  
  
"I spent the whole day yesterday wandering around the countryside, then I came back to the town, but didn't want to go home. Didn't want to pay for a hotel, I set up camp right here."  
  
She points to a pup-tent with her outdoor cooking gear still burning underneath the rainproof tarp.  
  
"This doesn't make any sense." I say  
  
"No it doesn't. So what the hell are you doing here?"  
  
I shake my head. "Look. It's just a coincidence." I say. "Dr. Strangelouvre brought the fight to the school, I was just following him." I put my hand on her shoulder. Then I pull her in close to me.  
  
"Come here for a second."  
  
BAM. She nails me right in the gut. Right where Ryoga was beating on me yesterday. Right around where Strangelouvre left me winded. All the blood seems to top off at the base of my brain like a carnival mallet bell ringing out pain, then the sensation drops just as fast to the bottom of me, and I'm collapsed on my knees. Reaching up for the dangly tassels of her sock. I don't even dare look up here skirt.  
  
"Fucking mutant bitch. Are you happy now?"  
  
"Not yet."  
  
And I feel a tug on the whole back of my head, as it's lifted from the top of my pony-tail, and then just as suddenly dropped back to the ground with my hair fanned out and shoulder-length long on both sides.  
  
I hear her knife slip back into its sheath. My hair from my severed ponytail drapes my face from both sides, and I bunch myself up inside this darkness and hope it all ends soon. The little rubber-banded stub of my hair plops to the ground in front of me, as I hear Akane walking back to her campsite.  
  
I looked so good in a pony-tail, dammit. Guy-form, girl-form, didn't matter. I had one, ONE thing that didn't have to change, and now it's gone. Before I know it, Akane is back in front of me again, and a hot tin of water is dumped on my head. My breasts disappear. Tummy goes from supple to firm. My hands are stronger.  
  
Now, I'm a guy on my knees in the dirt.  
  
"Get up, Ranma."  
  
"Fuck you." I say. "you cut my hair. Go away! I never want to see you again!"  
  
She turns.  
  
"Wait. You didn't let me finish!" I get to my feet, and I ask her "How do I look?" She turns back, and My hair is dripping warm and wet on my shoulders, my clothes are spotted and caked with mud, and my bruised up face, little trickle of blood seeping out of one corner of my mouth.  
  
"You look fine. Help me pack this stuff up. Will you?"  
  
We walk back to her campsite, and in a few minutes we've taken down everything and packed it in her bag. With a towel over my long strands of hair and on my shoulders I ask if we can go to the park and pick up my stuff. She says sure. We should be home before one she says. I tell her I'm not going home.  
  
We leave Funrinkan just about as Kodachi and Dr. Strangelouvre are coming around. By the time they're leaning up, looking for us we're gone.  
  
We're on our way to the park and Akane looks at me.  
  
"Kodachi is not like me you know. She's a normal girl. She can get pregnant."  
  
We keep walking. The street is warm in the afternoon sun and parts of the concrete are already dry.  
  
"She might be pregnant right now, even."  
  
Maybe, I say. I shake my head and my dry hair flaps out in waves in the sun, as I hand her towel back.  
  
We get to the park, and I toss Akane's bread into the nearest waste basket. The basket makes a gong sound as the bread impacts the bottom.  
  
"You didn't have to do that."  
  
I asked her if she'd want to eat it. She says nothing and we walk to the bench where my pack is. Heavy and cumbersome I hoist it up on my back.  
  
I say that women with Testicular Feminization are at a higher risk of cancer. She could get cancer from it.  
  
She says nothing, standing there looking at me.  
  
She could have cancer right now, even.  
  
"Maybe." she says. "I'll have to go home soon."  
  
Or she could come with me.  
  
This is beyond cause and effect. Our separate curses, our meddling parents, everybody who thinks they can come between us. Causes and effects from all sides. None of that matters. From right here, our causes can be our own. We can effect whatever we choose.  
  
It's so hard for me to say I love her, but I do.  
  
"I love you too." She says.  
  
She comes close to me. Her arms reaching around to my back, I let my pack slide to the ground. Her head tucked in next to my chin. I reach to her back and I hold her for as long as I possibly can.  
  
A 14 Rivers 


End file.
